Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

‘No, you shall not.’ Mr G came into the yellow sea of my lamp. His hat was off, his coat crumpled and his trousers torn at the knee.

  ‘Dulcie,’ I said. ‘She was—’

  ‘She was,’ he agreed wearily and stepped aside. ‘I should warn you—’

  But I was not listening. I rushed through the gateway into a back yard – ten feet square and backed by a tall, dark building. Sidney Grice’s lamp was on the floor and in its glow lay a woman on her back, her legs splayed out and the skirts pulled up above her head, and I did not need to pull them down to know that it was Lady Dulcet Brockwood. But when I did I saw, by the dancing flame, the terrible nothingness that filled her now.

  An ornate horn-handled knife had been driven into Dulcie’s neck up to the hilt and on her forehead was a hastily carved X.

  I kneeled and took her hand, still warm but without a spark of the life that had radiated from her – could it really have been only a few minutes ago?

  ‘Move away,’ Sidney Grice said.

  ‘What?’ I heard his words clearly but they meant nothing to me.

  ‘Away.’ He pushed my shoulder roughly and I staggered to my feet.

  Sidney Grice was crouching between hers, his lamp held over her torn undergarments. He pulled a test tube out of his satchel.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I hardly understood my own words.

  ‘Something that the police surgeon will not do and is best done while it is still fresh.’

  ‘It?’ I asked numbly.

  ‘The corpse.’

  His words buffeted into me and I watched in horror as he took a lint ball in his locking tweezers and inserted it into her.

  ‘Has she not been desecrated enough?’

  Sidney Grice glanced up from his task. ‘Do that in the corner.’

  And it was only then that I realized I was vomiting down myself. I turned sideways, and when I had finished he was putting his test tube away.

  ‘And what did you find?’ I asked bitterly.

  ‘Blood,’ he said flatly. ‘Just blood.’

  ‘What on earth did you expect?’

  Sidney Grice sprang up, his body twisted in rage. ‘Whose work was this? Was it mine or yours?’ He screwed himself up, fists clenched, his eye flying, bouncing over the stones, his right socket empty, as he stared at me in horror. ‘By God, girl, if there were any justice in this cruel, savage, repulsive world, this would be you instead of Lady Brockwood.’ There was a fury in his voice I had never heard before and a new disgust on his face. ‘You stupid stupid girl.’ He made as if to slap my face with the back of his hand, and I wished to God, and I have wished it ever since, that he had knocked me cold. ‘I cannot speak to you,’ he said. ‘Who is there?’

  That last remark was not addressed to me.

  ‘Show yourself.’ He had his ivory-handled revolver in his right hand.

  I had still heard nothing.

  Sidney Grice stood straight, feet apart, his head tipped back, scanning the building behind me.

  And then there was a piercing shrillness and a quick, low laugh.

  ‘I have you, you filth.’ Sidney Grice raised his gun and fired, and the shutters on the fifth floor shattered. He threw himself backwards against the wall and, gun in both hands now, let off three more shots. The shutters exploded into a cloud of splinters, showering over us.

  Silence.

  ‘Did you get him?’

  Sidney Grice put a finger to his lips. He was walking forward, intent upon that window, gun aimed straight at it.

  Another laugh – a longer one this time – and something flew down, clattering at my feet. I bent and saw that it was the coachman’s whistle.

  ‘Go and look after your friend,’ my guardian said quietly. ‘She must be terrified.’

  I had almost forgotten about poor Harriet. I turned dumbly, numbly, to leave. I could not look at Dulcie again but I would see her for the rest of my days.

  ‘And, March,’ he said softly, ‘I am sorry.’

  In all the time I knew Sidney Grice, he never said a kinder or a crueller thing.

  72

  The Dead and the Damned

  I COULD NOT speak when I found Harriet. She had covered Sally’s face with a bloodsoaked handkerchief.

  ‘Oh, March.’ She shrank back. ‘What have we done?’ There were heavy footsteps and a man’s voice calling, ‘Here they are.’

  Geoffrey, the coachman, and his two companions appeared breathlessly. ‘Milady?’ Geoffrey asked, and I found I could not look at him. ‘Stay with the women,’ he told his companions and squeezed past me up the alley.

  His heavy footsteps faded and stopped and I heard a gasp as a man might make if he is punched in the stomach, and then a strange noise, a cry gathered and growing into the howl of a man who has lost the mistress he adored.

  There was a severed finger in the dirt.

  *

  The woman and her children were dead by the time we returned to the square, from slum fever, no doubt, and Dick, the young footman, had laid a blanket over them. She still had my piece of silver wedged in her fist.

  *

  I cannot remember when I found out that Marjorie Kitchener was Hagop Hanratty’s sister-in-law – she did not advertise the fact – and she had told him of our plans in the hope of getting us stopped.

  But Hagop had other plans. If we caught the attacker so much the better. The streets were so quiet because he had ordered people inside. But he did not want us taking any unnecessary risks and, just to make sure, he had sent a message to Sidney Grice.

  *

  I do not know how I got through the next few days and nights. I only know that the gin did not help.

  After three days, Geoffrey the coachman came to see me. He was whey-faced and his eyes bloodshot. He was very quiet and respectful. Lady Brockwood would not have wanted him to be otherwise, he told me.

  I tried to say how sorry I was but he brushed that aside. I told him I was quitting as a detective and was about to tell Mr Grice.

  ‘Oh no, miss.’ An odd smile came over Geoffrey’s lips and he shook his grizzled hair. The way I see it is, you got my mistress killed and you will get her killer or die in the process – begging your pardon, miss – but after that you can drown in your own piss-pity for all I care.’ He made a deep bow and spoke confidentially in my ear, though nobody else was in the room. ‘God damn you and keep you rotten writhing in your box, you selfrighteous bitch.’ He straightened up. ‘Good day, Miss Middleton. I will see myself out.’

  There was no point in telling him that I had damned myself a long time ago.

  *

  I put away my gin and had a long hot bath.

  Sidney Grice was mashing a boiled onion, though it did not take much effort. I helped myself from the domed dish in the middle of the table and sat opposite him.

  ‘You have a choice.’ He did not look up from dusting his mush in white pepper. ‘You can destroy yourself and, if you do, you will never recover.’

  ‘How can I ever forgive myself for what I have done?’ I picked up my fork for lack of anything else to hold on to.

  ‘And I am the one you portray as arrogant.’ He sowed his dinner with salt.

  ‘I do not understand.’ I put my fork down.

  ‘Who are you to forgive yourself for what has happened?’ He banged the cellar on the tabletop. ‘It is for the injured and, perhaps, the God you believe in to forgive.’ He slipped his napkin out of its bone ring. ‘I shall continue my proposal with the alternative.’ He tucked the napkin into the top of his waistcoat. ‘You can destroy the man who murdered them.’

  ‘Can I?’

  Sidney Grice formed his food into an exact square before he replied. ‘With my help, you can do it or die in the attempt.’ He rotated his plate forty-five degrees. ‘Either way should atone for your mistakes.’

  ‘Is that all they were?’ I asked wretchedly.

  ‘Your plan was defective.’ He filled his tumbler. ‘But your motives were immaculate.’ He raised
his glass and looked at me through it. ‘And our net is ever tightening.’

  ‘Is it?’ I asked hopelessly. ‘Is it really?’

  ‘We have hold of one rope each, March.’ He closed his fist. ‘Will you be the one to let go and set him free?’

  I did not reply for we both knew the answer to that.

  73

  The Secret and the Shame

  SIDNEY GRICE HAD gone to see Mr Jones/Chang, who wished to speak to him alone, and so I went to the Empress Cafe. I needed the small comfort of their chocolate cake, and the waitress was just showing me to a table when I spotted a familiar shape with her back to me, her green veil pulled up.

  ‘Good morning, Freddy. I thought it was you.’

  Freddy had clearly had the same idea as me, for her plate was scattered with dark crumbs. She had also beaten me to another of my plans and was sucking on a cigarette, her third, to judge from the ashtray at her side.

  ‘March.’ She smiled. ‘Do join me. Has Mr Grice given you leave or are you playing truant?’

  ‘The latter.’ I sat to face her.

  I gave my order just in time to get the last slice, and Freddy asked for another pot of coffee.

  ‘Is Lucy not with you?’

  ‘It would have been Eric’s birthday today,’ Freddy told me. ‘She is visiting his grave.’ Her left eye was dry and more inflamed than usual from her not being able to close it fully.

  ‘You do not go with her?’

  Freddy stubbed out her cigarette. ‘She prefers to be alone. They were very close.’

  I looked at Freddy, her expression so open and giving every appearance of being pleased to see me. Could she really be such an accomplished actress to have so deluded me? The Freddy that I knew loved her friend. And I found it almost impossible to believe that she would have maliciously burned her own house down with her parents and servants still inside. We all write things in our diaries that we regret as we get older. I decided not to bring the topic up.

  ‘How is Lucy?’ I did not mention that we had seen her for ourselves.

  ‘She is well.’

  There was a hesitancy in her reply that I could not ignore. ‘Is something wrong?’ I gave her one of my Turkish and struck a safety match.

  ‘She seems very low in spirits lately. I do not know why.’ Freddy blew smoke across the table over my head. ‘But she has hardly spoken to me since Monday.’

  ‘Does she get such moods often?’

  Freddy shook her head sadly. ‘Not even after the attack.’

  There was a crash and I looked up, and Freddy turned round.

  ‘Oh, Mummy,’ a little boy cried. ‘A monster.’

  The mother shushed him but it was clear that she too was shaken.

  ‘I shall never get used to that,’ Freddy said softly.

  ‘Is there no kind of cosmetic paint you could try?’ I asked.

  ‘To mask my ugliness?’ Freddy hissed, but instantly reached out to touch my arm. ‘I am sorry. I know you mean well.’ She breathed in. ‘Mrs Bocking took me to the New Royalty Theatre once and got Ellen Terry herself to show me how to apply greasepaint. But what looks natural under the glare of the limes looks garish in the daylight, besides which, it irritated my raw skin.’

  ‘How strange,’ I said. ‘When we were in the library I glimpsed your profile and thought it very like hers.’

  ‘People used to say I could be her daughter.’ Freddy bowed her head. ‘What a stupid woman I am to dwell on that.’

  The waitress returned with our order and hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked.

  She cleared her throat. ‘The manager sends his compliments,’ she began sheepishly. ‘But he wonders if madam would mind. . .’ she coughed again, ‘lowering her veil.’

  Freddy put a hand up, clearly used to such requests, but I half-rose and touched her wrist.

  ‘Kindly send my regards to the manager,’ I instructed, ‘and tell him he had better start pretending to be a man and ask madam himself.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ The waitress blushed and bent to take Freddy’s used crockery. ‘He made me say it.’

  ‘I know.’ Freddy lifted her veil back again and, when the waitress had gone to relay my message, added, ‘It is easier to comply.’

  ‘You do not strike me as a woman who does things the easy way.’ I sat back.

  ‘That much is true.’ Freddy smiled lopsidedly.

  ‘Is it very sore?’ I asked.

  ‘Very,’ she said, ‘but I could live with that.’ She delved in her handbag. ‘Do you know what is really painful, March?’ And she brought out a green handkerchief to dab her eyes. ‘It is knowing I am so hideous that I once terrified three hardened criminals on their own street at night.’Freddy blew her nose. ‘It is seeing you kiss Lucy every time you see her but being too repulsed to kiss me.’

  ‘Oh, Freddy.’ I put a hand to my mouth. ‘It is not that at all. I am always frightened of hurting you.’

  Freddy threw her handkerchief back into her bag. ‘Can you think of a better way to do so?’

  I was so overcome with shame I hardly knew what to say. I said, ‘Can I kiss you now?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It would have been forced from you.’

  ‘I swear that was the only reason,’ I vowed, and Freddy nodded.

  ‘I believe you are different from the others. I see the way you look at me and how Mr Grice does too.’ She clipped her bag shut. ‘He is a horrible man but he meets my gaze without a shudder.’

  ‘Perhaps one day you will meet a man who will love you for who you are.’

  ‘And what a great catch he would be,’ Freddy said mockingly. ‘To settle for a woman who is ugly and poor.’

  ‘Do not say that,’ I said urgently. ‘The more I know you, the more I see you for what you are – a fine, brave, loyal woman.’

  ‘Men do not seek to marry brave women,’ she told me.

  Behind her, near the door, I could see the manager gesticulating angrily at the waitress.

  Freddy said, ‘Can I tell you a great secret?’

  ‘If you are going to confess to a crime,’ I warned, ‘I cannot promise to keep it a secret.’

  Freddy sucked her lower lip. ‘I believe that this would only be a crime if I failed.’

  ‘Go on.’ I leaned towards her.

  ‘Attempted suicide is an offence,’ she told me. ‘To succeed is not. I have on me the means to do it here and now.’

  It flashed through my mind that Freddy might produce a knife or razor or a gun, but then I saw her touch the amulet that hung around her neck. I had taken it for a perfume bottle.

  ‘Poison?’ I mouthed, and Freddy’s lips said, ‘Cyanide.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How happy do you think my life is?’

  I leaned back. ‘Why are you telling me?’ I asked. ‘To make me feel guilty if you do it?’

  ‘Because I wanted to know how it sounded,’ she said.

  ‘To me or you?’

  ‘To me mainly.’ Freddy looked lost. ‘When I was in that den, I knew more than anything that I wanted Lucy to live, but I was not so sure about myself.’ She plucked at her collar. ‘Sometimes when I go to bed I pray that I shall not wake up.’

  ‘I said that same prayer for years,’ I admitted for the first time. ‘My fiancé died in great pain because of me. And then, when I thought I never could, I fell in love with a man who would not have me. Do you think scars are easier to bear because nobody sees them?’

  It seemed hypocritical, but I could not rub salt in her wounds by telling her how George had come back to me.

  ‘And now?’ Freddy touched my hand.

  ‘There is a man out there performing monstrous deeds and I believe I can help to stop him.’

  ‘Then you have a reason to live.’ Freddy dabbed the outer corner of her eye.

  ‘Do you think Lucy has not suffered enough?’ I asked. ‘Should she also lose her one true friend?’ I saw Freddy waver. ‘I watched a man die from cyanide poisoning
,’ I pressed on, ‘and it was horrible. He had seizures and a heart attack and his lungs filled with fluid and he choked to death.’

  ‘Really?’ Freddy looked shocked. ‘I thought you just fell asleep.’

  ‘You drown inside yourself,’ I said, ‘in agony.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Freddy looked at me long and hard. ‘I shall throw it away,’ she decided.

  ‘It is too dangerous,’ I said. ‘Give it to me and I will take it to the chemistry department at the university.’

  Freddy unclipped the chain. ‘I have sometimes worried what would happen if the glass broke.’

  I wrapped it in my handkerchief and put it in a side pocket in my handbag and stood up. ‘Now you will never have to find out.’

  ‘You have not eaten your cake.’

  ‘I have lost my appetite.’

  I left payment on the table and marched straight up to the manager. He viewed me edgily. ‘I trust everything was to madam’s satisfaction.’

  ‘No, everything was not to my satisfaction,’ I said, much too loudly, and was gratified by the hush my words produced. ‘There is a cockroach in this cafe.’ And several squeaks of dismay from my audience served to reward me.

  I am not very good at swishing out of places as a rule. I catch my heel or snag my dress or trip over my feet. But I did a swish that day which would have done credit to Sarah Bernhardt. My only regret is that nobody noticed. They were too fascinated by Freddy pushing my chocolate cake into the manager’s face.

  *

  Back on the street Freddy grinned and said, ‘I rather enjoyed that.’

  ‘And you would have missed it if you were dead.’

  She looked down. ‘When this is all over—’ She broke off and tried again. ‘Have you ever stayed friends with a client?’

  ‘Never,’ I assured her and her face fell. ‘But it is about time I did.’ I took both her hands. ‘But you have to stay alive for that.’

  She forced a smile. ‘I will try.’

  ‘Succeed,’ I said in my best Gricean manner, and Freddy laughed.

  Then almost as quickly her eyes filled with tears and she pulled her hands free, but only to fling her arms round me. ‘It is hard, March.’ She trembled. ‘So hard.’