Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  Sidney Grice had his gunmetal pen in his hand. He pressed the clip and a stiletto shot out, as long as one of Geraldine Hockaday’s knitting needles but flattened to a razor edge. He lurched up and thrust towards the voice. I saw the tip enter the bootmaker’s nose and emerge on the other side.

  The bootmaker howled. ‘Jesus.’

  Sidney Grice twisted the blade and ripped it out, tearing the nostrils wide open.

  ‘By the Christ, that hurts.’ The bootmaker’s left hand cupped his lower face, his blood instantly spilling over. He hurled the revolver into Sidney Grice’s gaping socket and my guardian’s head reeled back.

  The bootmaker reached behind himself.

  ‘Knife,’ I yelled, as he slashed in a wide arc, but Sidney Grice dropped under it, lashing unseeingly with his blade like a sabre into the side of his assailant’s arm.

  ‘Stop it.’

  Sidney Grice jabbed.

  I dived at the bootmaker and his elbow struck my temple, stunning me again. My bonnet came loose and, as my hand went to it, I came away with a hatpin. And, clutching it by the glass bead handle, I grabbed his trouser leg and drove the point into the side of his knee.

  ‘Damn-shit-damn.’ The bootmaker grabbed at my wrist and the pin snapped off inside him at the haft. ‘Shit-shit-shit.’ He raised his knife high to hack it down on me and I tried to roll away, but he had stamped on my dress. ‘Die, you stinking bitch.’

  Quick as a rapier, Sidney Grice’s stiletto plunged into my attacker’s thigh. The bootmaker howled, wrenching himself free and away, hurling his knife to clatter uselessly into a sideboard as he half ran, half toppled from the room.

  I heard irregular footfalls and the front door slam, and got up blearily and dizzily to see Freddy trailing the broken chair and trying to hold Lucy’s head in place. It had, as her murderer predicted, been sliced clean off.

  Inspector Pound was on the floor, curled on his side.

  ‘George.’ I threw myself over to him and looked. The knife was in his chest, jammed hard, I saw, between his ribs.

  ‘Oh, thank God, it is the right side.’ He was leaning on the handle so I turned him on to his back, and he groaned. ‘We shall get you straight to hospital. I shall give you my blood like I did before and you will complain about having to recuperate in the countryside. We shall bore our children and our grandchildren with the story of this as we sit holding hands by the fire.’

  George smiled distantly and his hand rose to touch my cheek.

  ‘Oh dear God, how I love . . .’ But those fingers never found me. His arm fell and he shivered; his breath fled. Those beautiful eyes faded and the man I loved above all others, above my very self, gave up his soul and became a body.

  97

  The Cold Earth

  I SENT A message to Lucinda. Did she want me to stay away? After all I had almost got her brother killed once, and succeeded the second time, but she replied that I must come.

  There was much pomp – a Metropolitan Police guard of honour and a brass band. I think George would have been quietly amused by all the fuss.

  The vicar had known the deceased man well, for George had been a regular churchgoer. He was clearly distressed and gave a lovely eulogy. George would have been embarrassed by that.

  I sat at the back with Sidney Grice but we were ushered to the front. His eye, normally so alert and taking in every detail, was fixed on that oak coffin in front of the altar.

  The last time I had stood by a grave I had begged George to marry me. It was an awful time but I would have given anything to be able to live it again, to have him take off his glove and touch my cheek and tell me that he did not know.

  The mourners scattered until there were three of us. My guardian took the vicar away and then there was just Lucinda and me. She came round that terrible hole in the earth and put out her hand.

  ‘I believe you loved George.’ Her voice was clear and steady. ‘And I know that he loved you. If I hate you he will have died for nothing. I know we will never be friends, but I hope we have learned to forgive each other.’

  I took the hand she proffered and held on to it, but I could not speak.

  And when I was alone, I took the wilted carnation and let it fall on to his name, cut in brass. ‘No shrine,’ I vowed, ‘my darling.’

  My guardian came back for me. He took off his glove and wrapped his long slender fingers around mine, and we watched the first clod crush my flower. ‘It is too hard.’ My voice flew, thin and unanswered, through the yew trees to the steeple pointing ever upwards, I had been told, to heaven.

  And Sidney Grice turned his face away for fear that I would see something.

  98

  The Heart of Sidney Grice

  WE DID NOT speak over dinner. We hardly spoke at all. now except in monosyllables. Sidney Grice made no attempt to converse but browsed lackadaisically through some scientific tome.

  I chewed and swallowed automatically, hardly noticing what was on my plate and not even bothering with a book.

  Molly cleared, having failed to lure Spirit with a dripping frond of cabbage for a ride in the dumb waiter. And we adjourned downstairs.

  ‘I cannot work at this again,’ I said.

  ‘As you wish.’ He selected some reading matter from the pile beside his chair.

  ‘Tell me about that locket,’ I said, unintentionally loudly, and Mr G closed his journal.

  ‘It was before your parents had even met.’ He squeezed his right eyelids together.

  I reached for the pot and caught my cup with my sleeve, knocking it on to the hearth. ‘Uncle Tolly told me that my mother had an understanding with an Oxford undergraduate,’ I prompted, and he shrank back in his chair. ‘But you studied at Cambridge.’

  ‘I went to Oxford first, but there were too many memories and I detested the architecture.’ He took on a hunted expression. ‘Spires should point and nothing more. They have no business to be dreaming.’

  ‘Memories of what?’ I pressed, and Sidney Grice’s right eyelids crept apart again.

  ‘You must promise that you will not tell a soul, nor make a written record of what I am about to tell you, for at least sixty years.’ He rested his hands on his knees.

  ‘You have my word,’ I promised, and, though I knew he had no high opinion of that, he took it.

  Sidney Grice interlocked his fingers in his lap. ‘Your mother and I were in love,’ he admitted at last. ‘I was not in a position to marry her, but I had asked her father’s permission to make my intentions clear and he readily agreed. It was hinted that I should take over the running of his clog-making factory, for I had a particular and violent aversion to bootlaces at the time. I took your mother boating on the Cherwell, having meticulously planned a picnic in our third favourite meadow.’

  ‘Why not one of the other two?’

  ‘The second had been given over to a particularly cantankerous Hereford bull,’ he explained impatiently. ‘And the first was, of course, in Bavaria – a little far by punt, as even you might imagine.’

  Sidney Grice fell silent. Did he believe his tale to be complete?

  ‘What happened?’

  He lowered his head. ‘We had rounded a bend and the meadow was in sight. The champagne was chilling over the side.’

  I did not want to interrupt his account by pointing out that he abhorred alcohol, but he broke off into another reverie.

  ‘And?’

  ‘A pack of jackdaws swooped down, doubtless attracted to the parti-coloured buttons on my red and blue striped waistcoat.’ He ran both hands through his hair to the back of his neck. ‘They alarmed me, March.’

  ‘Were you already frightened of birds by that time?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Since I was seven years and one day old,’ he concurred. ‘I stepped back and the boat rocked. Your mother jumped up to save me and the punt capsized.’ His hands worked round to take him in a stranglehold. ‘I could not swim for I was always too embarrassed . . .’

  He could not quite
bring himself to say that it was because of his short right leg.

  ‘And my mother was tipped in too?’

  He exhaled. ‘I was thrown into the branches of a Salix Babylonica – a weeping willow with an effulgent crop of golden catkins – but your mother fell into the water and she could not swim either. I looked about me for a pole or some flotation device, but the boat had drifted away and your mother was being dragged under by the weight of water on her lovely dress.’ His thumbs rotated round each other. ‘I readied myself to go in after her.’

  ‘Even though . . .’

  ‘Even though,’ he agreed. ‘But, as I was disentangling myself, another man jumped in. Connie – your mother – had gone under, only her beautiful golden hair on the surface to mark where she was. Then even that became submerged. I dived in and her hand broke through the surface. Somehow I managed to clutch it and sank with her. At least we would die together, I thought, but then I was aware of the other man grabbing my coat and being hauled up, and both of us being towed to the bank and dragged out on to it.’

  ‘Foolish pupj our saviour upbraided me. ‘You might have drowned the most beautiful girl on whom I have ever clapped eyes. I lay prone, coughing up river water, and saw a tall, sturdily constructed man with military moustaches.’

  ‘My father,’ I guessed.

  Mr G’s thumbs revolved furiously. ‘He scooped Connie up as easily as you might lift Spirit. Follow me, he said, and carried her off across our once third favourite meadow to a hostelry, but I slunk away. It was three miles to where I was living, but I could not face walking through the streets of Oxford. I marched for the rest of the day and all night, until a van of chickens stopped and took me to London. I never returned to Oxford. I did not even get my very special things sent on.’ His thumbs were stilled. ‘One month later I got a letter from your mother, expressing her disgust that I had not even troubled to go with them to the inn to be sure that she was safe and comfortable – I could not tell her that I was too ashamed – and with the news that she was to marry our rescuer.’

  He closed his left eye and forced the right to follow suit, his fingers jabbing, plucking at the glass eye whose original was buried in Charlottenburg Cemetery.

  ‘And yet you became my godfather,’ I observed.

  Sidney Grice covered his face. ‘It was your father’s idea. I suspect he felt guilty, not having realized my situation when he proposed to your mother, and I imagine that she had come to appreciate how humiliating the episode had been for me and wished to make amends. But of course . . .’ He blew noisily into his hands. ‘Your mother did not live to see you christened. Your father and I became allies, united in part by our joint loss.’ He clutched his cheeks and leaned his head back. ‘She was the most staggeringly beautiful person I shall ever meet.’ His voice slowed. ‘And I do not mean just her appearance.’

  ‘Is that why you went missing in the sixties?’

  ‘I was never missing.’

  ‘Nobody knew where you were.’

  ‘I did.’

  And that was it. I picked up my cup unbroken and meditated. Perhaps it was true: we are none of us who we pretend to be. ‘Why did your revolver not fire?’ I held the cup handle back, but it would never glue. ‘I saw him slip the safety catch.’

  Sidney Grice rubbed his left eye, which was still inflamed, though the sight was restored. ‘It has three safety devices, or I should not have surrendered it so readily.’ My guardian slipped his third finger through the jackal ring on his watch chain.

  ‘He was a good man,’ he said hesitantly, and I did not need to ask who he meant. ‘That was a fine piece of detective work, deducing that the maids had not answered the door.’ I waited for my guardian to add that he could have done so himself, but he continued, ‘And it was quick thinking on his part to pretend to know that my cane was a Morse key.’ This was the first time he had mentioned George since the funeral. My guardian worked his lips against each other. His head was still back. ‘I know that I vexed you about not getting married but I would not have stood in your way.’

  I gazed at him in wonder, this mean-hearted, big-hearted man. ‘Look at me,’ I said at last, and his eye opened reluctantly, seemingly surprised to find me still there. And, when I had his full attention, I said shakily, ‘I love you.’

  My guardian chewed his upper lip and then his lower. ‘And, since the moment we met, I have always loved,’ he told me hesitantly, ‘a good cup of tea.’

  And Sidney Grice did not attempt to duck as my cushion hurtled towards him.

  99

  The Outcast

  I MET FREDDY at the Empress Cafe. It was the first time I had been out in weeks and I felt anxious to be amongst people. The decor was unchanged with its green floral tiles and paintings of Paris, but Freddy and I had not been the only ones to fall out with the manager and he had been replaced by a smart and welcoming middle-aged lady, who had brought smiles to the faces of her staff and customers alike.

  ‘I went to the convent,’ Freddy told me. To find out what had happened to Lucy’s son.’ She pulled back her veil but the waitress was used to her by now. They have called him Ishmael.’

  ‘The outcast,’ I remembered grimly from my Bible.

  ‘I shall change it to Samuel.’ Freddy poured our coffees from a tall silver pot, ‘Meaning God has heard my prayers for a child.’

  ‘You are going to look after him?’

  ‘Mr Grice is coming with me to collect him tomorrow.’ Freddy opened her cigarette case and tutted. It was empty.

  ‘How did he get involved?’ I took out two Turkish and handed her one.

  My guardian had had my case and flask repaired expertly, though not quite invisibly.

  ‘It was he who suggested it,’ Freddy leaned over the flame of my Lucifer. ‘He came to see if I was all right after . . . everything.’ She sucked in the smoke and her face lit up, and the pretty girl in her came to the surface. ‘Samuel is such a lovely boy, March.’ She smiled. ‘So affectionate and full of life, and the image of his mother. They had him slaving in the kitchen but they could not beat him down. I hope you will visit us.’

  ‘I would love to.’ I burned my fingers and hastily shook out the match. ‘Have you seen much of Mr Grice?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’ I could have sworn Freddy flushed. ‘He takes me for lunch sometimes to his club.’

  ‘The Diogenes?’ I said incredulously. ‘Where one cannot speak? That must be fun.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Freddy blew out with studied casualness. ‘A lovely place in St James’s Street. Quite cosy.’ There was no doubt about her blushing now. ‘Can I tell you something, March?’

  ‘Please do.’ I tried to hide my envy, for he had never taken me to dine anywhere.

  Freddy spooned in a sugar and slid the bowl to me. ‘When we got back from St Philomena’s last night.’ Her eyes flicked to mine and then away. ‘He asked if he might kiss me.’ She fiddled with her veil, though it was perfectly straight. ‘I asked if you had put him up to it.’

  ‘I did not even know he was meeting you.’

  ‘That is what he told me.’ Freddy smiled coyly. ‘And, when I said he might, I thought it would be a peck on the cheek.’ She inhaled from her cigarette. ‘But it was not.’

  ‘Perhaps it was mistimed,’ I suggested, for I knew that my guardian was not a lady’s man.

  ‘I do not think so.’ Freddy laughed lightly. ‘For it was quite a long kiss.’

  *

  ‘Freddy told me that you kissed her,’ I said, as casually as I could, over another boiled-to-death dinner.

  Sidney Grice turned the page of his Art and Science of Mummification book. ‘Her truthfulness is something you would do well to emulate.’ He closed his book. ‘And if I am also to follow her example, I am obliged to confess that I rather enjoyed it.’

  ‘I think Freddy did too,’ I told him faintly.

  ‘In that case, I cannot help but wonder,’ Sidney Grice reopened his reading matter by slicing a clean butter knife in
to it, ‘if she might let me do it again.’

  A worthier woman might have felt some happiness and I certainly wished it for them both, but I was like a sleepwalker then, making the right movements and saying the right words, drifting through my existence and hoping never to awake.

  100

  The Handysome Prince and the Client

  I SAT ON THE roof watching the nameless people bustle by – the children playing leapfrog or begging or scavenging the gutters; the mothers laden with babies in sackcloth slings; two old men, arms round each other’s shoulders for support, in a hobbling parody of a three-legged race; lumbering goods vehicles and speeding private carriages, laden omnibuses and the hansoms ever swooping like crows towards an outstretched arm. So much life tumbling blindly to where?

  I had found the ivory box with my three cubes of opium placed on my dressing table the night before the funeral but I did not use them. Some pains are too sacred to numb. The gin flask lay untouched by my feet, surrounded by stubbed-out cigarettes. My case was empty. It was time to go down.

  ‘Oh, thank heathens.’ Molly bawled so unexpectedly that I nearly lost my footing on the fire escape. ‘I thought I might have to descend that ladderer to come and get you.’

  ‘Did you want something?’

  Molly sucked her thumb. ‘Well—’

  ‘Have you come to tell me something?’ I added before she gave me a list of her heart’s desires, including a handysome prince and a glittersome sash.

  Molly extracted her thumb and wiped it on her apron. ‘Mr Grice requests your present in the study,’ she recited, adding in a conspiratorial whisper which was louder than her normal voice, which was more than loud enough already, ‘He has a customer.’

  ‘Client,’ I corrected, for her employer hates her calling them that.

  ‘Cly ain’t what?’ She reinserted her thumb. ‘And anyway that aintn’t not her name.’

  ‘Why?’ I sighed. ‘Does he not think that I have done enough harm already?”