A water cart trundled by.
‘Why are the cobbles made of wood?’ I asked.
‘That is to muffle the horses’ hooves,’ she told me, ‘so the sick can get some rest and the dying go to theirs a bit more peacefully. That’s the Universitaly Hospital there. Mr Grice explained it all to me. He’s a very clever man and very nice and he didn’t even tell me to say that.’
Number 125 was a tall, terraced Georgian house, white-fronted on the ground floor and red brick above, with an iron balcony on the first floor and separated from the pavement by a basement moat and railings. We climbed the four steps to the black-painted front door, and Molly produced a key on a string from around her neck and admitted me to a long narrow hallway.
‘One moment, please,’ she said, and went to the first door on the right to announce me.
‘And not before time,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I have not had a cup of tea for forty-two and a half minutes.’ And with that, the creator of the voice came out of the room to offer me his hand.
4
The Listeners
Sidney Grice was not at all what I expected. Though he stood erect, he was not much taller than my five feet and two inches, and slightly built. His hair was thick and black and swept back from a high forehead. His nose was long and thin and there was something almost effeminate about his appearance, with his bowed lips, smooth pale face and a dimple on his delicately constructed chin.
‘Miss Middleton.’ His greeting was civil but not effusive. His hand was small with long slender fingers, but his grip was strong. ‘How unlike your dear mother.’ His voice was soft but clear.
His eyes were pale blue and glassy, though his gaze was direct and his lashes were long and curled up in a way that I could only dream of.
‘You knew her?’
‘It was my privilege,’ he said. ‘The pity is that you did not. You have no luggage?’
‘Only this travelling bag. My boxes are to follow.’
‘We will take tea at once, Molly. Come, Miss Middleton. Let me show you around your new home.’
I followed him through the open doorway into a good-sized morning room. Straight ahead were two high-backed leather armchairs either side of a fireplace. To the right were six upright chairs round a low mahogany tea table. At the far end, behind a wooden filigree screen, tall windows opened on to the street.
‘The screen is to conceal me from snipers,’ he said.
‘Have you ever been shot at?’
‘Many times.’ He touched his left shoulder. ‘But only hit once. I prefer it when they miss.’
I laughed and Sidney Grice looked at me bleakly.
‘That was not a joke,’ he said. ‘Get down!’ With that he threw himself to the floor and I kneeled quickly beside him. ‘Absolutely hopeless,’ he said. ‘You will have to be faster than that in a real emergency.’
‘If you were wearing a bustle you would… Oh!’ I looked up at the window in horror. ‘Look out!’ Sidney Grice flung himself down again as I got up. ‘Annoying, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I do not think we shall play that game again.’
Sidney Grice brushed himself off. ‘It is a game that may well save your life one day.’
‘I would rather die sensibly,’ I told him, and he put his hand to his right eye.
Behind us was a library with four-leafed doors folded back so that the two rooms flowed into one. The library was lined with shelves, all crammed with books and papers, and one wall backed a row of oak cabinets each with four drawers.
‘These two chambers make up my study, the heart and mind of the house.’
‘You have a great many files,’ I said.
‘I am compiling a catalogue of every crime committed in this country throughout the century,’ he told me. ‘A Herculean task, but I am convinced that it is time well spent. It is a proven fact that criminals repeat their own and each other’s acts. So I am creating a system whereby every crime can be cross-referenced and an instant solution found as to its method and perpetrator. Is that alcohol I detect on your breath?’
He looked at me sharply.
‘I felt a little faint as I disembarked,’ I said. ‘But a passing parson very kindly gave me a sip of brandy, from what I believe is called a hip flask, to revive me.’
‘It is gin,’ Sidney Grice said.
‘Oh, really? I would not know the difference.’
He narrowed his eyes and we went back into the hall.
‘Surely there must be some new crimes,’ I said, but Sidney Grice huffed.
‘The criminal mind is perverted and convoluted but almost invariably unimaginative,’ he said as Molly came out in a fluster.
‘Oh, sir.’ She went pink. ‘What an incomplete disaster. We are quite out of Afternoon tea. We have some Morning and mountains of Evening but there is not a mouse-dropping of Afternoon to be had.’
Sidney Grice scowled.
‘Then go and get some immediately, and be sure it is weighed properly,’ he said. ‘Idiotic girl,’ he added as she scurried out. ‘That,’ he pointed past the stairs, ‘is the domestic world. I shudder to think what goes on down there.’
The first floor had a drawing room looking across to the university buildings. At the back was the dining room with a dumb waiter and the faint smell of cabbage.
‘Whilst we are alone I shall tell you something which you will find embarrassing,’ Sidney Grice told me. ‘You are wearing brown shoes.’
‘I know.’
He winced. ‘Brown is for the country. One wears black in town.’
‘But I left the country this morning,’ I said. ‘At what stage should I have changed them?’
Sidney Grice frowned. ‘I see you have spirit – a modern but not a feminine quality. With regard to your question, I believe that Kilburn is generally regarded as the outermost reach of civilization. I never venture beyond it.’ He sniffed the air. ‘I smell smoke.’
I sniffed too but could only smell his coal tar soap.
‘Do you mean metaphorically?’
‘No, literally. I dislike metaphors.’
‘And brown shoes,’ I said. ‘Is your house ablaze?’
‘My house is never ablaze,’ he said. ‘It is tobacco smoke. I trust you do not indulge, Miss Middleton.’
‘The train was so heavily laden that I was obliged to travel in a smoking compartment,’ I said.
Sidney Grice’s right eye disappeared, his eyelids collapsing into a meat-red cavity. I yelped and he caught his eye and popped it back into place.
‘Damnable thing.’ He pulled his upper eyelid down. ‘I went all the way to Egeria in Bohemia to have it made, hand blown to Professor Goldman’s precise measurements, and still it does not fit.’
‘How did you lose your own?’
‘I did not lose it.’ He flicked his hair back with a proud jerk of the neck. ‘That would imply a carelessness which is alien to my nature. It was plucked from its socket by a Prussian renegade when I thwarted his attempt upon the life of the Crown Prince. The world has yet to appreciate the debt it owes me for that deed. When Kaiser Wilhelm II is on the throne of the unified German states we can look forward to an era of peace across Europe that will last a hundred years.’
‘The world already holds you in high esteem,’ I said. ‘My friends often compare you to Edgar Allen Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin.’
Sidney Grice’s lips curled.
‘How splendid it is to be compared to an idiotic fantasy from the scribblings of a colonial lunatic,’ he said, ‘especially as he has obviously read of my achievements and made a clumsy attempt to emulate them.’
He had a curious gait, I noticed, dipping to the right, though he seemed to have no trouble mounting another flight of stairs.
The second floor had two bedrooms, his at the front and the one to be mine, facing a red-brick hospital building. Between them was a small room.
‘The pride of my house.’ Sidney Grice stepped aside to show me the bathroom. The fittings were indeed splendi
d, a white-enamelled bath on clawed brass feet, a white porcelain sink on a tall fluted pedestal and a matching water closet with a high cistern. ‘We have running water, cold and hot, as long as Molly keeps the stove alight.’
‘What luxury.’ I did not tell him how unsavoury I thought it to have a closet in the house. Little wonder one heard accounts of so much pestilence in London if all houses were so unhygienically equipped.
The top floor was an attic, he explained, which contained a box room and the servants’ quarters.
‘How many servants do you keep?’
‘I only have Molly and a cook. The cook does not live in and keeps to her kitchen. I do not believe I have seen her since she had the impertinence to offer me seasonal greetings on Christmas Day two years ago. The occasional scullery maid comes and goes, I am told, but they are of no interest to me.’ He paused. ‘Clearly Molly is not yet returned. It seems we must answer the summons of that doorbell ourselves.’
‘I did not hear anything,’ I said, and Sidney Grice clicked his tongue.
‘Your ears are younger and probably more sensitive than mine. You hear but you do not listen. The call is obviously urgent to judge from the rapid tugging at the pull. Let us stand quietly for a moment, then tell me what you hear.’
‘Should we not answer the door first?’ I asked, but Sidney Grice shrugged and said, ‘An urgent caller will always wait. Listen.’
We stood together in the corridor and far away I heard a bell, small and sharp, repeatedly clinking.
‘I hear it now.’
‘What else?’
I listened. ‘Nothing.’
‘Do you not hear the traffic outside, the rattle of wheels, the clop of hooves on cobbles, the cries of hawkers and mendicants in the street, the flutter of pigeons on the roof, the west wind drawing across the chimney tops?’
I listened harder. ‘I hear a faint hubbub,’ I said, ‘and the bell is getting frantic.’
‘A bell is inanimate and can no more be frantic than it could formulate an algebraic theorem.’ Sidney Grice scrutinized a small ink stain on his little finger. ‘But it would seem that our visitor is.’
We made our way back down the stairs.
‘See to the door,’ he said, and went into his study.
The lady to whom I answered the door was tall and elegant, with finely carved features white as limestone, though her cheeks were a little flushed as if by exertion. In her early forties, I estimated, she was well, though not richly, dressed in black and her hair was dark brown, neatly pinned under a simple hat with a gauze trim hanging just over her eyes.
‘Is this Mr Grice’s house?’ She was struggling for breath.
‘It is.’
‘I must see your master.’ She was clearly in a state of great agitation.
‘I have no master,’ I said, but took her through.
Sidney Grice was pretending to browse through a geological journal, but stood up from his armchair and ushered our visitor into the chair facing his across the unlit fireplace. I stood in the middle of the room, uncertain whether to stay or go.
‘You cannot know how glad I am to see you.’ The woman arranged herself. ‘I have heard it told many a time that you are really a fictional character.’
Sidney Grice’s neck reddened a little and his cheek ticked; he put his hand to his right eye.
‘The blame for that lies in the luridly inaccurate reportage of my cases by cheap periodicals,’ he said. ‘As you can see for yourself, madam, I am here before you in flesh and blood.’
The lady put her hands over her mouth and nose. She had a ruby ring on the third finger of her right hand.
‘There was so much blood,’ she said.
I looked at her green eyes. They were wide with horror, and I looked at Sidney Grice and, though it was not possible, it seemed that both of his were shining.
5
Horrible Murder
‘It is too horrible.’ Mrs Dillinger caught her breath. ‘My poor daughter.’ She swallowed. ‘Stabbed… stabbed to death and my son-in-law arrested for her murder. You must help me, Mr Grice.’
Sidney Grice sighed. ‘I am under no such obligation, madam. But, since you are here and I am bored, what is your name and those of the people involved?’
‘I am Mrs Grace Dillinger.’
‘I assume you are a widow.’
‘Yes, my husband died two months ago.’
‘And left you with child?’
‘Yes. It is expected in August.’
Sidney Grice waved his hand. ‘Continue.’
‘My son-in-law is William Ashby. His wife, my daughter is—’
‘Was,’ Sidney Grice corrected her.
‘Was Sarah.’
Sidney Grice took a small brown leather-bound notebook from the table by his chair and jotted the details on the first page with a silver pencil, as Mrs Dillinger reached into her handbag and brought out a rectangular white envelope. Her nails, I noticed, were neatly clipped and she wore a heavy rose-gold wedding band twined with a fine black thread.
‘William has written you a note.’ She held it out and Sidney Grice took it as if it were soiled, flicked the envelope open, withdrew a twice-folded sheet of paper and let it fall into his lap with little more than a glance.
‘What evidence is there against your son-in-law?’ he asked.
‘None at all.’ Mrs Dillinger knotted her slender fingers.
‘Then he has no more to fear than I,’ he told her, ‘for there is no evidence against me either.’
Mrs Dillinger pulled on the lapel of her coat.
‘He was in the house at the time,’ she said, ‘but he was asleep in the next room.’
‘Is he a heavy sleeper?’
‘Quite the reverse. He usually wakes at the slightest noise. It was the sound of a door opening and closing that disturbed him.’
‘Which door?’
‘The outer door of the shop at the front of the house. It has a bell which sounds when the top of the door strikes it.’
She was lightly perfumed with Damask.
Sidney Grice toyed with his signet ring. ‘Is the bell suspended on a hinge or a coiled spring?’
Mrs Dillinger touched her forehead with the fingertips of her right hand and the ruby glinted darkly.
She said, ‘What? A hinge, I suppose. What does it matter?’
My guardian observed her for a moment. ‘A hinged bell sounds but twice whereas a sprung bell makes a repeated clatter, on average five to seven double clangs, depending upon the force with which the door strikes it.’
Mrs Dillinger composed herself. ‘I see.’
‘But nothing until then?’
‘No.’
‘And where was your son-in-law?’
‘In the back room. The kitchen.’
Her boots had been well cleaned and blacked, but were splattered with fresh drops of mud.
‘And your daughter?’
‘The middle room. Their sitting room.’
‘And these rooms are confluent?’
‘Yes.’
Her clothes were well made but old. They had been repaired in places and obviously dyed for her mourning period, as the original floral pattern was still just discernible.
‘With no other access to the middle room? A window perhaps or a skylight?’
‘No. None.’
Sidney Grice leaned towards her.
‘So your lightly sleeping son-in-law slumbered through the brutal slaying of his wife only a few feet away?’
Mrs Dillinger stood up suddenly and caught hold of the mantlepiece.
‘Really, Mr Grice,’ I said and stepped towards her, but Sidney Grice signalled me to stay back.
‘Was there any blood on your son-in-law’s clothes?’
‘He was covered in it.’ Mrs Dillinger closed her eyes. ‘He took her into his arms.’
Her voice was barely audible and she was breathing heavily.
‘And she was already dead?’
‘Yes.
I think so.’ Her voice rose suddenly. ‘I do not know.’
Sidney Grice wrote something else in his book. He had a small scar on his right ear, I noticed.
‘And nobody else was in the house at the time?’
‘No. No one.’
Sidney Grice looked at her for a while.
‘Where were you when all this was going on?’ he asked.
‘In church.’
‘On a Monday night?’
‘There was a meeting of the Society for the Conversion of Heathen Children in Africa.’
‘There is no shortage of those in London,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘Was your daughter happily married?’
Mrs Dillinger broke into sobs and Sidney Grice tapped his teeth with the pencil. His teeth were clean and straight.
‘How can you put her through this?’ I asked.
‘This is nothing compared to what the police and prosecution will ask of her and her son-in-law.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side,’ Mrs Dillinger said.
‘I do not know what misled you to that conclusion,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘I have not expressed any support for your cause.’
Mrs Dillinger let go of the mantlepiece and swayed, and I stood ready in case she collapsed.
‘Then I must go and find somebody who will.’
Sidney Grice shrugged, but Mrs Dillinger stayed where she was.
‘I repeat my question,’ he said. ‘Was the marriage a happy one?’
‘Very… They were devoted to each other. He called my Sarah the apple…’ Mrs Dillinger stopped, unable to continue.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ I asked, but Mrs Dillinger whispered, ‘No. Thank you.’
I took her arm and guided her back into her chair, pulling up one of the upright chairs to sit myself beside her.
Sidney Grice tapped his feet together and said, ‘Did they have financial problems?’
‘No more than anybody else. They made enough to live on.’
Mrs Dillinger cleared her throat.
The Mangle Street Murders Page 2