by Chris Dolley
“We’re going to call it the The Perils of Poor Lily,” said Henry. “It’ll be a quarry-based serial of cliff-hanging peril. Each weekly episode will end with you in the direst peril.”
“Tied to a railway track with a train steaming towards you,” said T. Everett.
“Or dangling from a cliff top,” added Henry.
I had to say this didn’t sound to me like a plum part.
“Goodness,” said Emmeline.
“But every week you escape,” said Henry. “Just when everyone in the audience is convinced you’re a goner, in rides the hero to save the day.”
“Can’t I save myself?” asked Emmeline.
“That would never play in the Midwest, Lily,” said T. Everett.
“So, I spend all my time getting into trouble, and then a man saves me?” asked Emmeline.
If I’d been Henry, I’d have stepped back a foot or two at this point.
“Audiences love a damsel in distress,” said Henry. “But you wouldn’t be an ordinary damsel in distress. You’d be as you were this morning — someone who’d see a Lizard Man and dive right in. The audience will love you. You’d be a free spirit, always getting into scrapes. But then, with five minutes to go, you get into a scrape that no one thinks even you can escape from.”
“And then a man saves me,” said Emmeline.
“Not just any man, Lily,” said Henry. “He’ll be a hero ... with a white hat. And there’ll be plenty of male villains you can bash.”
“You’ve been very quiet, Ida. What do you think of the idea?” asked her father.
“I think Miss Fossett was born to hang from a cliff. She has such stout arms.”
“I do not!”
“You do!”
“Of course you don’t,” I said, strategically placing the Worcester body in between Emmeline and Ida. “Oh, look. Here’s Morrow.”
Heads turned, and the doctor, looking a little flushed and out of puff, hurried in.
“Sorry if I’m a little late,” he said. “I lost track of time.”
Which was understandable in the circs. If Reeves started eating postmen and leaving their internal organs on the doorstep, I’d be a little distracted too.
Morrow’s arrival was swiftly followed by that of Lady Julia.
“Has anyone seen Robert?” she asked.
“I saw him half an hour ago,” said Henry. “He and Berrymore were checking all the doors and windows were locked.”
“But where is he now?” asked Lady Julia. “He should be here. He’s not in his room or the library.”
“It is an unusual day, Aunt Julia,” said Henry. “I expect he’s giving last-minute instructions to Berrymore.”
The dinner gong sounded.
“Where is Robert?” said Lady Julia, sounding a tad more annoyed than concerned. “He’s never late for dinner.”
Berrymore emerged, pushing open the double doors through to the dining room.
“Have you seen my father, Berrymore?” asked Henry.
Berrymore looked surprised. “I saw Sir Robert ten minutes ago, sir. I was under the impression he was on his way here.”
Thirteen
had to wait. According to Berrymore, Sir Robert had left the butler’s pantry ten minutes ago en route for the drawing room. Babbacombe, on guard in the hallway — with a clear view of the door to the servants’ quarters — had not seen Sir Robert emerge.
Even Lady Julia joined the party that followed Henry through the servants’ door in search of Sir Robert.
An armed footman, who looked liked a younger version of Babbacombe, was sitting in a chair by the back door to the garden.
“Have you see my father, Witheridge?” asked Henry.
“I ... don’t know, sir,” said Witheridge, looking decidedly shifty.
“Either you have or you haven’t, man. Which is it?” barked Henry.
“He told me not to tell anyone, sir.”
“Who told you?”
“Sir Robert, sir. He said he was slipping out for five minutes and if anyone asked I was to say I’d never seen nothing.”
Witheridge had a distinct ‘rabbit in the lamp light’ look.
“Are you saying he went outside?” said Henry.
“He took a gun with him,” said Witheridge. “I offered to go with him, but he told me to stay at my post.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Lady Julia. “Robert would never embark on some secret tryst minutes before dinner.”
“Did he say where he was going? Or why?” Henry asked Witheridge.
“No, sir. He just told me to keep quiet about it.”
A search party was swiftly organised. Two brace of shotguns were fetched from the gun room and passed around. I had one for about five seconds before Reeves appeared at my shoulder and insisted it was his job to carry it for me.
Witheridge and Babbacombe were ordered to stay behind and protect the ladies. This, not unexpectedly, raised the ire of Emmeline, who objected to being left behind, insisting the search party would need all the sharp eyes it could get.
“You’re not dressed for it, girl,” snapped Lady Julia.
Lady Julia did have a point. Billowy dresses and a couple of inches of heel were not ideal attire for scrabbling around in the dark.
“Besides,” I said. “Someone has to stay behind and protect Witheridge and Babbacombe.”
With lamps lit and passed around, the party left the back door and split up. It was twilight and rather misty. The mist was an odd species of mist, too — one could see patches of the denser stuff drifting over the lawns.
Henry and the others set off for the outbuildings, calling out for Sir Robert as they went. I decided to head across the back lawn toward the mire gate. If I were looking for a secret trysting place, that’s the spot I’d have chosen.
The mist thickened and cleared around us. One second Reeves and I were in a pea souper, the next we could see almost one hundred yards. And as the lawns began to drop away, I saw the most unnerving sight. There, through a gap in the trees, I saw a hooded woman in a long black dress bent over a shape on the ground. She was eighty yards away at the bottom of the slope. And as I held up my lamp, she turned and looked my way. And then she was off, legging it at speed towards the mire gate.
We gave chase. I didn’t trust the direct route. Another bank of fog was drifting in and the ground would be covered in scrub and spreading tree roots designed to up-end the over-hasty. And Reeves was carrying a loaded shotgun. So we ran the longer way via the Yew Walk. It wasn’t until we were within ten yards that we recognised the shape on the ground that the woman had been bent over.
It was Sir Robert.
~
“Is he dead?” I asked, having a pretty good idea as to the answer. He was lying face down on the ground and hadn’t moved an inch.
Reeves knelt beside him and felt for a pulse.
“Sir Robert is deceased, sir, but still warm. I would estimate his time of death as mere moments ago.”
We both looked through the mist towards the mire gate. The woman had gone. All we could hear was the distant hoot of an owl and the calls of the searching parties.
“Should we give chase, sir?”
“Watch out for her footprints, Reeves. We don’t want to destroy them. Keep to the side of the track.”
We ran towards the gate. Ten yards short of our destination, I noticed a shotgun — presumably Sir Robert’s — lying on the path. We ran past, not stopping until we reached the gate.
A thick fog hung over the mire. We looked up the track and down. No lights. No hurrying shapes. No sound of running feet. It was as though the woman had vanished into the mist itself.
“We still don’t believe in ghosts, do we, Reeves?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
And then I shone the lamp over the ground by the gate, and had an even bigger shock. There were clear footprints in the soft earth superimposed upon the ones I’d seen earlier that day. They were not human.
“Is that a cloven hoof, Reeves?”
“It would appear so, sir. Most disturbing.”
We followed their intermittent trail back to the body. One could see where the creature had stood over Sir Robert.
“Cats don’t have cloven hooves, do they, Reeves?”
“No, sir.”
I stood there, the Worcester mind boggling. What were we dealing with? Mrs Lucifer or a well-dressed goat?
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked.
“No, sir. The imprint is far too large to be that of a deer. The woman could be a promethean, but the choice of cloven feet is extremely odd.”
“Could it be another of Morrow’s experiments, do you think? Is there a Clerkenwell Goat?”
“Not that I have heard, sir.”
I looked down at Sir Robert’s body and took a deep breath. Time to stiffen the lip, and harden the gaze. We consulting detectives had to see the puzzle, not the man. It’s one of the reasons we British make the best detectives — our innate detachment — that and being torn from the bosom of our families at a tender age and given seven years hard education at boarding school.
“What about this gun?” I said, retracing our steps back towards the gate. “Was it fired? I didn’t hear any shots.”
Reeves retrieved the gun and carefully broke it. “Two cartridges, sir, and, by the lack of odour, this gun has not been fired recently.”
“Odd,” I said. “Why didn’t he shoot? And what’s his gun doing here? Did he drop it and run?”
“There is nothing on the ground to indicate a struggle, sir. One would think that if the gun had been wrested from Sir Robert’s hands that one or the other party’s feet would have dug into the earth.”
“So, Sir Robert drops his gun here and legs it down the Yew Walk back towards the house?”
“That would be my interpretation, sir.”
“But why? The gun was his best protection. Even a cloven-hoofed promethean would back down against a man with a gun.”
“Perhaps Sir Robert believed the hooded woman to be a spirit, sir. I did note that the woman’s attire looked very similar to the previous evening’s ghost.”
“I thought Sir Robert pooh-poohed the idea of the ghost being real.”
“That is what he said, sir. It may not have been what he believed.”
Reeves, as ever, made an excellent point.
“I didn’t notice any glow to her face. Did you?”
“No, sir, though I had only the briefest glimpse of her face. Perhaps the fact that we hid the tin of RadioGlo paint prevented its use.”
As we walked back to Sir Robert’s body, I noticed something moving slowly up the wooded slope. It was Lupin. He had his back towards us, and was part shrouded in mist, but the hunched outline was unmistakable, however faint. He was heading for the back lawn. But where had he come from? And why hadn’t we seen him earlier? Had he been up a tree?
I tapped Reeves on the arm and pointed.
“Yes, sir,” said Reeves. “I had noticed.”
~
Our initial investigation of the crime scene complete, I raised the view halloo. We consulting detectives know the value of a pristine crime scene, and the destruction that two dozen extraneous boots can wreak.
“Over here!” I shouted as the first groups neared. “We’ve found him.”
One by one the search parties arrived. Henry was pretty cut up. As was Morrow.
“Was it Selden?” asked a grim T. Everett.
“No. We saw a hooded woman standing over the body, but she ran off the moment she saw us.”
“A woman?” said Morrow.
“Dressed very much like last night’s ghost, except this one had cloven feet,” I said. “You can see her tracks all the way to the mire gate.”
“Are you sure they’re hers and not a deer?” said Morrow.
“Look for yourself,” I said. “Have you ever encountered a promethean with cloven feet?”
“No,” said Morrow, giving the ground a good eyeball. He traced the tracks for several yards before kneeling down for a better look with his lamp. ”You’re right,” he said. “It’s not a deer. It’s someone running on two feet.”
“Could it be one of our prometheans?” asked Henry.
“We don’t have any prometheans with cloven feet,” said Morrow. “I’ve heard of people experimenting — as, regrettably, I had with Selden — but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Could she be a friend of Selden’s?” I asked. “A woman who felt she was a fawn trapped in a human body?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Morrow. “Selden never mentioned any such person, but I haven’t had contact with Selden for ten years.”
“How ... how was my father killed?” said Henry, his upper lip losing some of its stiffness.
We all looked down at Sir Robert. There were no obvious wounds, and no blood. Then Morrow knelt besides the body.
“Help me turn him over,” he said. “And bring another lamp over here!”
Morrow and two of the footmen rolled Sir Robert onto his back and, in doing so, revealed a bowl lying next to the body. It was half full of what looked like milk. Sir Robert’s coat had a matching white stain where he’d fallen on top of the bowl.
Before I could mention fingerprints, one of the footmen had picked up the bowl, dipped his finger in the liquid, and touched it to his tongue.
“It’s milk, sir,” he said.
At the very moment he spoke, the Worcester deductive wheels began to spin. Corpse with no obvious cause of death, bowl of milk next to the body...
“Sir Robert didn’t die from poisoned milk, by any chance?”
The footman leaped a good yard into the air, and came down spitting. And then wiped his tongue on both sleeves of his uniform.
“I’m sorry, sirs,” he apologised.
An understandable reaction, I thought. “Best to stand back and not touch anything,” I said. “Crime scenes are dangerous places. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for Selden.”
Morrow was now bent over Sir Robert, examining this and sniffing that. I still couldn’t see any wounds. And from the expression on Sir Robert’s face, I rather got the impression he might have died of fright.
“What killed him, Morrow?” said Henry. “He looks like he saw the devil.”
I mentioned the gun and how it looked to Reeves and I that Sir Robert had seen something so unnerving that he’d dropped the gun and run for his life.
“I don’t know about that,” said Morrow. “It looks to me like he asphyxiated.”
“Strangled?” said Henry.
“No,” said Morrow. “There are no signs of strangulation. He just ... was unable to breathe.”
“But how?” said T. Everett.
“I’ll have to get Sir Robert back to the Hall for a more thorough examination.”
Reeves coughed.
“Yes, Reeves?” I said.
“I was wondering what Dr Morrow thought of the small mark on the right side of Sir Robert’s neck, sir.”
“That’s one of the things I’m intending to examine back at the Hall,” said Morrow, sounding a little nettled.
I leaned in for a better view. There was a red pin prick of a mark on Sir Robert’s neck.
“It could be from a bramble thorn,” said Morrow.
Fourteen
Robert’s body was carried back to the Hall. Morrow suggested taking the body straight to his laboratory on the second floor, but Henry would hear nothing of it.
“My father is not going to spend the night in any second floor laboratory. The study is a more fitting place. He always liked the study. You can examine him there.”
A throng of servants — mainly the maids and kitchen staff — were waiting in the small hallway by the back door. Emmeline was there too, but I couldn’t see Lady Julia, Ida, or Lily. The news of Sir Robert’s death was greeted with much gnashing and wailing — particularly from Mrs Berrymore, who collapsed
on the spot and had to be carried into the kitchen. I had wanted a word with Emmeline, but she was part of the deputation carrying away the unfortunate cook.
A space was cleared on the large desk in the study and Sir Robert’s body placed upon it. The servants then withdrew, and Lady Julia, Ida and Lily came rushing in.
“How could this happen?” said Lady Julia. “What was he doing out there?”
“We don’t know,” said Henry.
I was waiting for someone to make the obvious suggestion, but no one did. I couldn’t see Dr Morrow either — presumably he’d beetled off to fetch his medical bag — so I thought I might as well broach the subject.
“Have you considered reanimating Sir Robert?” I asked. “You’d get Sir Robert back and you’d find out who killed him.”
“What did you say?” asked Lady Julia, narrowing her eyes to a frightening degree.
“Reanimation,” I squeaked. “Dr Morrow must be a whizz at reanimating the deceased. He has his own laboratory on the premises, and they always say the fresh ones reanimate the best.”
“The fresh ones!” If Lady Julia ever decided to audition for the part of Lady Bracknell she’d be a cert.
“That’s what they say.” I looked hopefully about the room for support, but found a roomful of averted eyes. Even Morrow, who must have just oiled in at the back, looked away.
Lady Julia dialled back the gimlet stare a turn or two. “Reanimation is for the lower classes, dear. And foreigners. People of quality prefer to meet their maker at their allotted time.”
“But if one’s murdered—”
“If one is murdered, one hopes one would have the good manners to stay dead! Who would receive a réanimé in their home? Certainly no one of quality. The poor creature would be shunned and forced to live abroad ... or appear in moving pictures!”
It was Henry’s turn to feel the heat of his aunt’s gaze.
“Reanimating my father is not an option, Roderick,” said Henry. “As much as the idea appeals.”
“Henry!” said Lady Julia.
“Excuse me,” said Morrow, inching his way through the throng. “May I suggest that people leave. If I’m to examine Sir Robert...”
“Examine?” said Lady Julia, reprising her Lady Bracknell voice.