The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Mr Harcourt was a portly, balding man with a luxuriant and well-tended moustache, and - for me, at any rate - a cold and fishlike stare. There was more warmth, and a twitch of a smile, in the greeting he gave Jesperson, leaving me in no doubt that my presence was unwelcome.

  Relief came swiftly in the form of a young lady descending the stair. Slender and dark-haired, with a face that was handsome rather than pretty, she was dressed like a shop assistant or office worker in a crisp, white shirtfront and plain dark skirt. Even smiling warmly in welcome, she had a serious look, her eyes haunted by worry.

  “Flora! Exquisite timing, as ever. Although if you had known to expect company you would have worn one of your pretty dresses, I hope,” said Harcourt. He performed hasty introductions and rapidly withdrew with Jesperson behind a solid oak door, leaving us alone in the hall with its sinister atmosphere.

  “Perhaps you’d like to see the garden,” said Miss Bellamy, touching my elbow to guide me along a corridor towards the back of the house. As I passed through the door, leaving the house, the taste of fresh air was almost intoxicating.

  “You are sensitive,” she remarked, leading me away from the cold back wall of the house, through an arbour and along a path, into a sheltered rose garden.

  “I claim no special powers,” I said, “but the atmosphere in that house is ... extraordinary. I have to wonder how you can live there.”

  She nodded slightly. “And yet, you know, most people feel nothing. Mr Adcocks never did. Mr Randall’s mood alters when he visits, and I am aware of his unease, yet he will not admit it.”

  Although I had not said so to Jesperson, I had toyed with the idea that Miss Bellamy herself might be the killer we sought. The manner of Mr Adcocks’s death seemed to indicate an attack by a strong and brutal man, an action impossible for most women; nevertheless, I had found that men tended to underestimate the female sex quite as much as they idealized it, and I could imagine a grieving fiancée who was in truth a cold-hearted murderer.

  But that idea vanished to nothing as soon as I set eyes on her, a slip of a girl, and as we sat down, side by side, on a curving bench in a sunny green spot, the scent of roses and the warm hum of bees filling the air around us, I was utterly certain that this gentle, soft-spoken female, so concerned about the feelings of others, was incapable of killing another human being, by any means.

  “How can you bear to live in that house?” I asked her.

  “Don’t forget, I’ve lived there nearly all my life,” she said. “People can get used to almost anything. Imagine someone who must work in a slaughterhouse every day.”

  “I imagine such a person would be brutalized and degraded by his work,” I replied. “If the comparison were to someone who must live in a slaughterhouse ... well, I can’t imagine many who would stick it for long. I’m surprised you never ran away. What was it like when you first came here? Were you terrified?”

  She looked thoughtful. “I can’t remember anything before I came here. I was not yet two years old. And back then, Mr Harcourt’s collection was only small. It grew along with me. Over the years, as he added items, he told me the story of each one. So I became accustomed to tales of violent death and human wickedness from an early age. I was not at all attracted to those things, but I accepted their existence. Imagine a child growing up in a madhouse or a prison. Even the strangest situations become normal if one knows nothing else.”

  “But now, at last, you can escape,” I said. “Have you set a date for your wedding?”

  She stared at me. “Surely William told you? I think it’s best we don’t even speak of an engagement until after I’m of age, and can leave here.”

  “You believe your guardian doesn’t wish you to marry?”

  She gave a short, humourless laugh. “Oh, I believe he would like to see me married! A wife and a widow in the same day would please him very much!”

  There was no point in beating about the bush. “Do you think he killed Mr Adcocks?”

  She did not flinch. “No. Despite his fascination with the subject, Mr Harcourt is no murderer.”

  “Do you suspect someone else?”

  She did not reply. I thought I saw something cornered and furtive in her look. “Miss Bellamy,” I said gently, “however painful this is, we can’t help unless you tell me what it is you suspect, or fear, no matter how slight or strange. Were you there, did you see anything, when Mr Adcocks was attacked?”

  She shook her head. “I bade him goodnight and went up to my room. I thought he was safe ...”

  “And your guardian?”

  “He was shut up in his room, as usual.”

  I looked towards the house, but the ground floor was shielded from my view by shrubs and foliage. “Is there another exit? From his room?”

  “No. And I would not have missed the sounds if he’d left the house.”

  “Who murdered Mr Adcocks?” I asked suddenly.

  “No one.”

  “And yet he is dead.”

  “He was killed by a powerful blow to his head. The blow came from a walking stick. Can it be called murder, is it even a crime, without human intervention?”

  I had seen objects levitate, hover, move about, even shoot through the air as if hurled with great force, although no one was near. Usually there was trickery involved; but not always. I had seen what I believed to be the effect of mind over matter, and also witnessed what was called poltergeist - the German for “noisy spirit” - activity. Yet I was deeply suspicious of everything attributed to the action of “spirits”. I had yet to encounter anything that was not better explained by the power of the human mind.

  “What are you saying?” I asked her gently. “You believe that the stick, an inanimate object, moved, and killed a man, of its own volition?” Yet even as I asked, the memory of the malignant power I had sensed in that very stick, only a few minutes earlier, made me much less certain that I was right to imply the impossibility of such a thing.

  “Have you ever heard of a deodand?”

  “I’m not familiar with the word.”

  “It’s a term from old English law: deo, to God, dandum, that which must be given. It referred to any possession which was the immediate cause of a person’s accidental death. The object was then forfeit to the Crown, to be put to some pious use.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and she smiled. “That walking stick was a deodand. Not officially; it’s hardly that old. But it was the proximate cause of death to a young man almost seventy years ago - so my guardian told me.

  “And the unpleasant stone gargoyle beside the stair? It fell off the tower where it had been placed many centuries before, and killed a mother and child.

  “My guardian collects such things, along with his morbid keepsakes from actual murders.

  “He gave Archie that stick, knowing what it was, and suspecting what it would do.” She stopped and passed a hand across her brow. “What am I saying? Of course he didn’t suspect. Why should he? None of them had ever hurt him, or me. Not even when I was a child who played with whatever took my fancy - he wouldn’t let me touch anything dangerous, of course, nothing sharp or breakable. I whispered secrets in the gargoyle’s ear, even used to kiss it, and it was that gargoyle—” She stopped, her hand to her mouth.

  I waited for her to go on.

  “It was in the wrong place, too near the stair. I thought perhaps, when the maid washed the floor, she’d pushed it out, but she insisted she never did. Yet it was not where it usually was, and that’s why Archie stumbled against it, and wrenched his ankle.

  “It happened again, just a few days ago, to Will. He fell over it, and if I hadn’t caught him, he might have struck his head, might have been killed, just like Archie!”

  “Someone moved it,” I said, trying to inject a note of reason. “If not the maid, then your guardian, or a mysterious stranger. And if Mr Randall’s stumble had resulted in a serious injury, even death, that would hav
e been an accident; no one could possibly call it murder, even if someone moved the gargoyle.

  “But that stick ... I really can’t imagine that a stick, in Mr Adcocks’s possession, could have caused his death without the intervention of another person. If you think your guardian was controlling it, willing it to strike—”

  “No! Why would he do that? Even if he had the ability, why would he want to kill my fiancé when he was looking forward to seeing how I would cause his death?”

  She had gone white except for two hectic splashes of red in her cheeks. I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. Because you don’t understand that I, too, am a deodand. I am the gem of his collection. My early history explains why he took me in. I killed my entire family before I was two years of age.”

  I gripped her hands. “Miss Bellamy—”

  “I am utterly sane,” she said calmly. “I am not hysterical. These are the facts. Being born, I brought about the death of my mother.”

  “That’s hardly—”

  “Unique? I know. Listen. Nine months later, my father was taking his motherless children on holiday when we were involved in a railway accident. In the crash, my brother, a child of two, was thrown to the floor, as was I. I landed directly on top of him, a fact which may have saved me from injury, but caused his death. I have never known whether he died of suffocation, or if my weight broke his neck.”

  “No one could call that your fault,” I said, trying not to dwell on the image.

  “I know that,” she said, pulling her hands away. “Believe me, I am not such a fool as to think it was anything other than extremely bad luck. I have had many years to come to terms with my past. I do not require your pity. I tell you this only so you may understand Mr Harcourt’s interest in me.

  “My father was injured in the accident. Some months later he was still in an invalid chair, needing a nurse to help him in and out and wheel him about. We’d gone out for a walk— When I say ‘we’, I mean my father in his chair pushed by his nurse, a young man, and I in my pram, pushed by mine, a pretty young woman. We stopped at a local beauty spot to admire the view. My nurse put me down on a blanket on the grass, near to my father, who was dozing in the sun, and then I suppose they must have stopped paying much attention to anything but each other as they fell to flirting. I hadn’t yet learned to walk, but I was getting better at standing up, and as I hauled myself to my feet, using my father’s chair as support, somehow I must have let off the brake - maybe the nurse hadn’t properly set it - and as he rolled away, I just watched him go, picking up speed, until I saw the chair carrying my last living relative go over the edge of the cliff, and bear him to his death on the rocks below.”

  I made no further effort to comfort her, unable to find the words. “So Mr Harcourt considers you as some sort of loaded weapon in his possession? Ready to go off when you are loved?”

  “He has never said as much, but that’s what I’ve understood by a gleam in his eye, and a quickening of interest, once I became of marriageable age. It was he who contrived to introduce me to a number of wealthy young men, until Archibald Adcocks took the bait. And he pressed me to accept, although I was inclined to wait.”

  “Regardless of what Mr Harcourt believes—”

  “I know. And you’re right, I don’t believe it of myself. Mr Harcourt imagines, because he kept himself so coldly distant, repelling my natural affection, and sent me to day school rather than risk my becoming too close to a kind governess, that I never was loved, and never loved anyone, since my father died.

  “But there was a girl at school... My guardian may have no idea how passionately girls can love each other, but I’m sure you will,” she said, with a look that should have made me blush. Instead, it made me smile.

  We looked at each other like conspirators. “I take it your friend remains alive and well?”

  “Indeed, and still my dearest friend, although we’re now more temperate in our emotions ... or, at least, the expression of them. So, you see, I know my affection is not dangerous.”

  “And yet you seem to think that by becoming engaged to marry you, Mr Adcocks signed his own death warrant. And that Mr Randall is under threat for the same reason.”

  “Yes ...” She looked thoughtful. “But not because of my feelings for him, or his for me. It’s something else. Marriage to anyone would take me away from this house, would remove me from my guardian’s collection. That’s it!” she said, and stood up.

  “What is it?”

  “He thinks marriage is the only way he might lose me. He’s never imagined I might simply decide to leave.”

  I stood up, too, to face her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Mr Harcourt is scarcely sane when it comes to his collection. He cannot bear the thought of losing a single piece of it. He is happiest when gloating over it alone, and whenever he has a chance to add something new. Although he admits potential buyers, he only wants their envy and admiration as they view his objects - he will never agree to sell an item, no matter how much money he is offered.

  “And while he has been talking about my marriage since I was sixteen, and began pushing me at eligible bachelors on my eighteenth birthday, driven by thoughts of what he thinks will happen when I am once more part of a family, greedily imagining how his collection will grow after the violent, accidental death of my husband... yet he knows this will be possible only if he lets me go. In his twisted mind, I am part of his collection, and the thought of losing me, even only temporarily, and in aid of gaining more, is terrible to him.”

  “His mind is divided?”

  “I am sorry, Miss Lane. You should not have been brought into this. There was no need for William to enlist the aid of a detective. I should have realized that I am the only one who can end this madness.”

  She started back to the house and I followed. Although I had no idea what she intended, I felt that we were approaching crisis.

  She raised her fist to rap on the heavy oak, but at the very first blow the door to her guardian’s study swung open.

  Harcourt was at the far end of the room, by the window, displaying something in a flat wooden box to Jesperson. They both looked around sharply as we entered, Harcourt startled and annoyed. Clearly, he had not expected us, and I could only assume that he had neglected to shut the door properly.

  “What’s the meaning of this disturbance?” he demanded, hastily shutting up the box.

  “I must speak to you.”

  “Let it wait. We have company.”

  “I am happy to have witnesses.” She took a breath. “I shall not marry.”

  I had tensed myself against the negative atmosphere upon entering the house, and had been particularly reluctant to enter Harcourt’s study, expecting it to be the epicentre of the unrest, yet as I slowly followed Miss Bellamy, I found that what had been unpleasant and discordant was now harmonious. Using the metaphor of scent, consider bonfire smoke. A great waft in the face is horrible, but at the right distance, the scent of burning leaves and wood is pleasant.

  “You’ve rushed in here to say that? I am at a loss to understand why,” Harcourt replied coldly. “Your change of heart is of no interest to me. I suggest you write to Mr Randall.”

  “You don’t understand. I mean I shall never marry.”

  His eyes bulged. “Are you insane?” Suddenly, he turned on me. “What have you been saying? What sort of mad rubbish, to turn her mind?”

  “Miss Lane had nothing to do with it,” Flora said swiftly. “I have been thinking matters over for the past several days, and only now decided to tell you—”

  “Oh, very likely!” He had been casting a venomous glare on me, but now stared coldly at Jesperson. “I’m afraid I must ask you to take this female person away, immediately.”

  I could see that my partner was at a loss: should he leap to my defence, invent excuses, or pretend to a masculine solidarity that might leave the door open for f
uture visits? Although I didn’t want to leave Flora alone with Harcourt, I didn’t know what we would achieve by trying to stay, so I left the room, just as Flora was demanding, “Am I not allowed to have my own friends?”

  “As long as I’m your guardian, Flora, you will do as I say. You’ll have nothing more to do with that female, and you will not break off your engagement. We’ll forget you ever said anything about it. Mr Jesperson, if you please!”

  As they emerged, with Flora in the lead, I was surprised to see the hint of a smile on her face. She winked at me before turning on her guardian again.

  “So, I am to be your object and meekly allow your will to prevail in everything, until my twenty-first birthday changes everything?”