Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she began indignantly.

  Mr G sniffed. ‘Provide me with the name of your aforementioned but, thus far, anonymous and seemingly ineffectual legal representative.’

  ‘Mr Spry of Spry and Fitt,’ Freddy said.

  ‘Lucy’s solicitor,’ I pointed out.

  ‘It is easier to have the same man look after our interests.’ Freddy reacted defensively, though I had not accused her of anything. ‘Especially as I cannot afford my own. But is this really the time to worry about such things?’

  ‘Bearing in mind it may be our last opportunity to do so, yes.’ Sidney Grice gave her what might otherwise have been a reassuring smile.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Mr Grice,’ George Pound admonished him.

  ‘You shall find precious little pity,’ my guardian told him, ‘from this odious churl.’

  ‘You want to watch your tongue.’ The bootmaker bristled.

  ‘I am often told that, though I suspect that people mean they want me to do so.’ Sidney Grice touched his glass eye. ‘But it has had no effect on my manners thus far.’

  ‘Not for the better, at any rate,’ I testified.

  ‘Let me make a prediction,’ Mr G continued, as casually as he would when holding forth to me in the comfort and security of our study. ‘You may be consoled or appalled to know, Miss Wilde, that – if your captor has his way – you will be the last to die.’

  ‘No.’ Freddy went white.

  ‘You are a bright fellow, Mr Grice.’ The bootmaker relaxed the pressure on Lucy’s throat. ‘Maybe you could tell them why.’

  ‘If I were in your position,’ Mr G brought out his two half-pennies, ‘which I do not expect to be, I would assess my intended victims. The policeman is big and strong and most likely, you might think, to put up a fight. Then there is me. I am a handsome fellow but short in stature and, fools might imagine, handicapped by my unequal lower limbs and glass eye. You are not a fool, however, and know that I have done battle with many a criminal, though few as loathsome as yourself. Two of the women, being restrained, could do little to resist, so Miss Middleton would be the next in line.’

  ‘Go on.’ The bootmaker waved the knife.

  ‘I imagine you will want to have your way with Miss Bocking and, since you strike me as a man who rejoices in cruelty, you would probably like to make Miss Wilde witness your act and the sight of her friend being slaughtered before you dispatch her at your leisure.’

  He rattled the coins like dice.

  ‘Very good.’ The bootmaker made a mock bow. ‘Only, with the other two tied up, what is to stop me having my way – as you so delicately put it – with Miss Middleton?’

  George bunched his fists and crouched a fraction at the knees, but he caught my eye and stayed where he was.

  My guardian winced. ‘I was hoping that would not occur to you.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were.’

  ‘For it puts me under an obligation to grant you something precious,’ Mr G continued.

  ‘Think you can buy me off?’ The bootmaker snorted.

  ‘It is knowledge.’ Mr G made a flourish with his left hand, reminiscent of an organ grinder turning his handle. ‘The consciousness that you only have one card to play and that, once you have played it, your game is over.’

  89

  The Keeper of Secrets

  THE BOOTMAKER DID not even blink. ‘If you mean that, once I have decapitated this bitch, you can all rush me, you cannot have forgotten that you gave me another card.’ He bent and picked up the revolver. ‘Six, to be precise.’ He took aim at my godfather. ‘How do you fancy your chances now, cripple?’

  ‘I shall take a personal pleasure in watching you hang,’ Sidney Grice forecast.

  ‘The gun is not loaded,’ I bluffed, and the bootmaker broke the breech.

  ‘It looks fully loaded to me.’ He clicked it back together.

  ‘They are blanks.’

  ‘Are they, Mr Grice?’

  ‘No,’ my godfather admitted.

  ‘Thought not.’ The bootmaker tucked the barrel into his waistband.

  ‘Why in the name of all that is holy could you not have stepped off your pulpit and told a lie for once?’ Inspector Pound exploded.

  My guardian regarded him coolly. ‘Did you want him to put the lie to the test on my ward?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ George conceded.

  ‘Only suppose?’ Mr G raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you held my goddaughter in higher regard than that.’

  ‘That is not what I meant.’ George Pound threw his head back. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘Whilst we are having such a nice chat,’ the bootmaker said, ‘what was all that carp about chewed-face’s insurance?’

  Accustomed though she must have been to such insults, Freddy’s raw cheek still ticked.

  ‘I was wondering when somebody would take an interest in that.’ Mr G wound his hand the other way. ‘Steep House, Miss Wilde’s family home, was razed to the ground, and she gave me to believe that the insurance company was refusing to pay for it.’

  ‘I gave you to believe the truth,’ Freddy insisted. ‘But I cannot see why it matters at this time.’

  ‘What is the name of that company?’

  ‘C. S. Derwent Assurance.’

  ‘Acarus Scented Wrens,’ mused my guardian and, for once, at least I knew what he meant.

  ‘They have an office above Spry and Fitt, your solicitors,’ I remembered.

  ‘I know they share an address,’ Freddy said distractedly. ‘But I have never been there.’

  ‘Nor shall you.’ Mr G stopped winding, but his lower arm still jutted out at a right angle to his side. ‘Even if you survive this tiresome ordeal – and, rest assured, I have almost every intention of delivering you from it intact, regardless of Miss Middleton’s indifference to your fate.’

  I did not trouble to dispute his allegation, for I had an inkling by now what his tactics were.

  ‘You are quite mad,’ Lucy raged. ‘We are all facing death here.’

  ‘And possibly none so imminently as you,’ Mr G agreed amiably. ‘For I do not believe that this creature feels under any obligation to adhere to my schedule.’

  ‘Is all this actually leading anywhere?’ The bootmaker rested the hand holding the knife on Lucy’s shoulder, the blade dangling over her breast. ‘If you are playing for time, it will serve no purpose.’

  ‘I shall cut to the quick.’ Sidney Grice tidied out a kink in his watch chain.

  ‘So shall I,’ the bootmaker quipped.

  ‘After we visited the offices of Spry and Fitt, Miss Middleton and I made a brief excursion to the first floor. The dust on the stairs and landing suggested that my ward and I were the first to explore that area for many months.’

  ‘The hem of my dress got dirty,’ I remembered.

  ‘And yet you made nothing of it.’ Sidney Grice shook his head despairingly. ‘Once there we came across two intriguing plaques. One was inscribed CLOSED and the other IN CASE OF CLOSURE PLEASE DEPOSIT MAIL AT GROUND-FLOOR OFFICE, and their obvious permanence inspired me to penetrate the woodwork with the aid of a bradawl in my Grice Patent Denied Housebreaking Cane. Upon doing so, I found myself presented almost immediately with a London Stock building block. In short, C. S. Derwent Assurance does not, nor ever has, existed.’

  ‘You kept that a secret from me,’ I huffed.

  ‘No, I did not,’ Sidney Grice retorted. ‘I told you we had hit a brick wall.’ He appeared to be checking his upper jaw now.

  ‘Yes, but I thought you meant figuratively.’

  ‘Most companies denied having issued any policies for Steep House.’ Mr G gave his temples a cautious examination. ‘But one trading under the name of Appleyard Alliance was insistent that they had settled this matter as soon as the police and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade confirmed that there were no suspicious circumstances.’

  ‘They are lying,’ Freddy insisted. ‘I have never seen a penny.’

/>   ‘I have formed the opinion that they and you are both telling the truth,’ Mr G said, to everyone’s apparent confusion, ‘for Mr Appleyard himself assured me that he has a receipt for a considerable sum paid to the customer’s solicitor, one—’ He indicated Freddy.

  ‘Silas Spry!’ she exclaimed, her fear pushed briefly aside by her sense of injustice. ‘He stole my money.’

  ‘Naughty boy.’ The bootmaker grinned.

  ‘I think it unlikely that Miss Bocking would have permitted him to do that?’

  ‘What, in the name of sanity, are you raving about now?’ Lucy flared.

  ‘Silas Spry has very few clients and yet he does not accept any more,’ I recalled. ‘And he lives in Berkeley Square.’

  ‘My enquiries reveal that Spry does not come from a wealthy background, nor did he marry money.’ Sidney Grice palpated his Adam’s apple.

  ‘What, just from a share of the insurance payment?’ George objected.

  ‘Even Miss Middleton remembered that Mr Clorence Bocking, Lucy’s father, was embroiled in an expensive court case with his sister for purloining the design of her invention.’ Mr G stood on tiptoe and craned his neck, as if the lady in question were to be discovered hiding behind the sofa. ‘Eventually he settled out of court. Clorence Bocking lost everything, including New House, which, for the sake of kinship, his sister had granted him the use of for his life.’

  ‘So when he died Lucy had nothing,’ I concluded.

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Lucy exploded. ‘Utter fantasy from start to finish.’

  ‘Whereas,’ my guardian added, ‘Mr Tormead Wilde bequeathed a sizeable range of profitable concerns to his only remaining heir.’

  ‘But I have nothing,’ Freddy gasped.

  ‘You have a considerable fortune,’ Sidney Grice told her, ‘though, inconveniently for you, it is in the hands of Mr Spry, who acts at the behest of the lovely though imperilled Miss Bocking.’

  ‘That is not possible.’ Freddy shook her head violently to cast the thoughts away.

  ‘Who read your father’s last will and testament to you? Who informed you of his dire financial straits?’ Sidney Grice fired his words like bullets from a Gatling. ‘Was it perchance the subject of so much of our intercourse today, the elusive Mr Silas Spry? Is it mere coincidence that he dramatically improved his domestic accommodation a matter of months after the death of your parents? I shall break one of my strictest rules by answering both of those conundrums myself: it was and it is not.’

  ‘And has it ever occurred to you that I had also been fed lies by Silas Spry?’ Lucy demanded.

  ‘Numberless possibilities occurred to me long before I even accepted you as a client.’ Sidney Grice turned his palm down. ‘However, I rejected that one as it fails to explain how you obtained this house and all its expensive, if repellent, fixtures and fittings.’

  ‘Oh, I quite like it.’ The bootmaker amused himself by twisting Lucy’s ear. She gritted her teeth but eventually he laughed to hear her cry out.

  ‘But why is Steep House still in ruins?’ Freddy asked. ‘If they had control of my estate, why have they not sold it?’

  ‘The money was probably in a trust fund which Spry can administer,’ I conjectured, ‘but a house cannot be transferred without the owner assigning the deeds, which are probably in a bank vault somewhere.’ I measured my words. ‘And how could Spry have asked you to access or sign those over without arousing suspicion?’

  The bootmaker snorted. ‘So this bitch—’ he waved the blade in front of Lucy’s eyes—‘stole all that bitch’s money. Is that it?’

  ‘Not if you want to know how you came to be selected.’

  The bootmaker gripped his knife so furiously I thought he would use it there and then. ‘What in the name of Zeus are you drivelling about now? Nobody selected me.’

  Sidney Grice windmilled his arms carelessly. ‘If you are not more cautious with that knife, you will never know.’

  90

  The Lampless Alleys

  THE BOOTMAKER’S EYES travelled from person to person. ‘This had better be good,’ he threatened, but his grip relaxed.

  ‘Miss Bocking approaches Johnny Wallace with an offer to do what she thought he did for his own amusement.’ Mr G took to patting an imaginary large dog. ’Id est violate another woman. However . . .’ He tickled behind the imaginary dog’s ears. ‘Wallace was not a rapist. He did not mind assisting others to perform the acts for a fee, but it seems that all but the vilest criminals – such as this forensic specimen behind Miss Bocking – have their scruples.’ He shooed the dog away. ‘In fact, in some ways, Johnny was an exemplary figure. He did not smoke and he did not drink.’

  ‘Well, he did when I met him,’ the bootmaker remarked. ‘Like a camel. That’s how I was able to get him drunk and take his place.’

  ‘Barmaid’s gin,’ my guardian told him.

  ‘Water?’ The bootmaker spluttered. ‘So he was faking it?’

  ‘Do you know why Johnny Walrus was so keen to hand the job over?’ Mr G fluttered his long curled lashes.

  ‘Suppose you tell me.’

  ‘A wise supposition. You have heard, I take it, of Hagop Hanratty?’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ The bootmaker screwed up his face. ‘Even the Chinamen pay him dues.’

  ‘Hanratty has dedicated a substantial amount of his life to bringing the wealthy and gullible into his establishments.’ Mr G half-crouched. Even his chair was fanciful now. And he was having considerable success until a series of attacks on women frightened them off the area. And he was so infuriated by the bad publicity generated by the attack on a Miss Hockaday that he withdrew his protection from Johnny Wallace. The trouble is, as we know, he could frighten Wallace off, but not only did the attacks not end, they increased in frequency and viciousness. When Albertoria Wright was found, Hanratty put a bounty on the capture of any man guilty of attacking women in his territory, and was determined to make an example of him. Unfortunately, Geraldine’s brother, Peter, made too convincing an impression when he pretended to be a procurer and paid for his act with his life.’

  ‘But surely, once he had explained he was her brother—’ Pound began. He had edged a good foot or more further.

  ‘I do not think they gave him much of a chance to talk,’ I said. ‘His tongue was cut out.’

  ‘Like Princess Philomena.’ The bootmaker chortled.

  ‘You have a good knowledge of the Classics,’ I remarked, and his face darkened.

  ‘That prying tongue of yours could get you into trouble,’ he warned. And you have quite a tongue too, Mr Grice.’

  ‘And it has a great deal more to tell you yet,’ Mr G replied, with no evident concern. ‘Including a revelation which you might find distressing. Mr Hanratty has vowed to crucify – and he means that quite literally – the murderer of those two fine though reckless ladies in the lampless alleyways of Limehouse.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for that.’ The bootmaker waved his knife like an angry schoolmaster with a rule. ‘They tried to trap me. In fact the second one—’

  ‘Dulcie,’ I breathed, sickened at the memory.

  ‘That damned vixen pulled a gun on me,’ he told us in wounded tones. ‘And if her friend had not distracted her by begging for help, she could have done for me. But I saw my chance and took it. One chop with this knife and I had half her hand off and the gun with it.’ He paused in memory of the event. ‘She was a game one, though – not a glimmer of fear as she tried to fight me off. Gave me a good old knee in the crotch, tore at my hair and cracked my skull on the wall – made my head ring like a Sanctus bell. I would have liked a lot more time with her.’

  ‘You disgusting—’

  ‘Don’t, March,’ Pound cautioned. ‘It’s exactly what he wants. But he’s no man when he can only frighten women and girls.’

  I wondered briefly if George knew the true significance of what he had just said, but realized that he could not have.

  The bootmaker’s face blazed
, but it was then that I saw his powers of self-control. In a moment his expression turned to a sneer. ‘Still on first-name terms?’ He grinned. ‘Which of you wants to watch the other die?’

  It was then also that I saw George Pound’s self-possession. ‘If I rush you now,’ he said calmly, ‘you won’t have time to aim for my head and it will take at least three shots in my belly to bring me down before I get there. Think Mr Grice will stand calmly back while you fire them off?’

  ‘Think Miss Middleton will?’ I added.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Lucy implored.

  The bootmaker narrowed his eyes as he weighed us up. ‘Let us try it out, shall we?’ He tried to outstare George, but Pound met his eyes coolly. ‘Only, if I disable you and this pipsqueak first, I can promise you one thing, Inspector, your lady friend will have a very messy end indeed.’

  ‘And, as I have already hinted to my unusual ward,’ Sidney Grice chattered blithely, ‘jealousy may well be the root of the malice that ignited – then smouldered – in the ruins of Steep House.’

  ‘How in the name of Hades did we get on to the subject of that infernal house again?’ the bootmaker expostulated.

  ‘Because that unworthy emotion,’ Sidney Grice plucked floating petals from the air over his head so convincingly that I could almost see them myself, ‘was not germinated, nor did it take root or flourish within the noble heart of Miss Freda Tulsima Wilde, for she loves her friend who, it transpires, hates and envies her.’

  ‘Envy Freddy?’ Lucy scorned. ‘For what?’

  ‘It was Miss Wilde whose parents were rich whilst yours, though she did not know it, were facing penury. It was Miss Wilde who was clever and witty and turned all the boys’ heads. Most pertinently, it was Miss Wilde who stole the heart of your beloved brother, Eric.’

  Sidney Grice watched his petals float away with an almost-beatific expression.

  ‘That is a lie!’ The chair rocked violently and if Lucy Bocking could have broken her bonds, I would have feared for my guardian’s safety. ‘Eric may have had a crush on Freddy but I was the one he really loved.’