by Joan Smith
MURDER IS COME AGAIN
Joan Smith
Chapter One
“I trust London will behave itself for the next fortnight while the Berkeley Brigade is vacationing at Brighton,” Sir Reginald Prance said, smiling at his companions as he lifted the tails of his coat to perch on the arm of a chair.
The four founding members of the Berkeley Brigade had met in Lord Luten’s rose drawing room to discuss plans for this well-earned vacation after solving their latest case. Lord Luten and his wife, the former Lady deCoventry, Sir Reginald Prance, Bart., and last but by no means least, Coffen Pattle, lived close to each other on Berkeley Square. Luten was a leading member of the Whig shadow cabinet, whose aim was to unseat the reactionary Tories. Mouldy and Company, the Whigs called them. Prance had some fame as a novelist, while Coffen was known as a friend and colleague of the others. When this aristocratic clique became involved in crime-solving, society dubbed them the Berkeley Brigade.
Their unofficial leader, Lord Luten, turned to Coffen and said, “This visit comes at a convenient time, when you have just inherited that little cottage from your uncle. I haven’t heard you mention this Uncle Cyrus before.”
“We don’t speak of him. Not a real uncle at all, but one of them removed or step uncles.” He turned to his cousin, Lady Luten. How does it work, Corrie?”
“I believe your grandmama’s younger sister married his papa, but the papa had been married before and Cyrus was the first wife’s son. I expect that makes him a step uncle.” She frowned and added, “Or something of the sort.”
“Great step uncle, peut-etre?” Prance suggested.
“Very likely,” Coffen agreed. “Anyhow, his name’s not Pattle but Cyrus Bolger. A bit of a bad egg, actually. He was a bachelor, had no kids of his own, which is why I got the cottage.”
“Any money?” Prance asked, voicing the question on the mind of the others.
“Not a sou, according to Weir, the lawyer.”
“Pity. Not that you need it.”
“Weir sent a statement as long as your arm listing his debts and funeral expenses and so on. You’d be surprised to hear how much it costs to die. Actually I owe him tuppence, but he said not to bother.”
“Generous,” Prance sniffed.
“What did he die of?” Luten asked.
“I’ve no idea. Old age, probably.”
“Why did you never introduce this relative to us when we were in Brighton?” Prance asked. “I would like to have met him.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Reg,” Coffen said. “Not your sort at all. He was a bit rough around the edges.”
“I hope I am not so insular as to object to an occasional rough edge,” Prance sniffed.
“It wasn’t an occasional edge. He was rough all over. He never encouraged me to visit him. I met him at a low tavern in Brighton once when I wandered into the slums by accident. Didn’t care for the looks of him but we got to talking over a pint. You know how it is in a strange town when you have no one to chat to in a tavern, and it turned out we were related. I met him there a few times, but he never asked me to his place. Anyhow he borrowed a few pounds from me and I never saw him again.”
“It turns out it was a good investment,” Prance said.
“Eh? It wasn’t an investment. He called it a loan, though I knew I’d never see it again, and didn’t.”
“I stand corrected,” Prance said. “Bread on the waters would be more a propos.”
“Not bread either. Cash in the hand is what it was. He was with some pretty shady looking characters with names like Dipper and Weasel, or p’raps it was Foxy. I checked my purse before I left, I can tell you. I couldn’t have been more shocked when I got the letter from the solicitor telling me he’d left me his cottage. I figured he lived in a box, or an alley. The place is very likely a wreck but if it can be fixed up, I’ll keep it for holidays.”
Luten turned to his wife. “Was this charming gentleman some kin to you as well, Corinne, as you and Pattle are cousins?” he asked with a mischievous spark in his eyes. He enjoyed teasing her about her Irish relatives, who were impoverished but genteel.
Pattle answered for her. “No relation on account of him being a step relative.”
“So there,” she said to Luten, with a toss of her curls.
Luten’s butler, Evans, arrived with coffee and scones. Before Corinne married Luten, Coffen took breakfast with her more often than not as his own cook couldn’t — or wouldn’t — cook. In fact, all his servants had been outstandingly remiss in their duties. All that changed when Corinne’s former butler, Black, went to work for Coffen after she married Luten.
Black’s stern hand had soon trimmed the staff into line. His valet suddenly remembered how to use the iron, bootblack and the brush. His cook learned how to cook, and even his groom was improving, though Fitz still had trouble finding his way about town. The best valet in the world couldn’t make Coffen a dandy. His mud-coloured hair retained its tendency to tumble over his forehead. Even a well-pressed jacket couldn’t hide the bulge of his stomach, and he always managed to sully his cravat and topboots, yet despite these sad tendencies there was a noticeable improvement.
“Will you drive your new curricle and those frisky grays to Brighton, Coffen?” Corinne asked. Coffen had recently fulfilled a long-held dream by purchasing a dashing sporting carriage and a team of matching grays.
“I plan to, certainly,” he replied. “Sixteen miles an hour. Be there in no time. Fitz can take my trunk in the carriage. You interested in sharing my rig, Prance?”
Prance was addicted to comfort, and preferred it with a luxurious overtone. He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but his pained expression left no doubt as to his aversion to the idea. The mentioned “no time” would be six or seven hours of merciless jostling about in the open air, quite possibly ending up in a ditch. “I pray thee hold me excused,” He said. “So windy and dusty, you know.”
Prance, a pineapple of sartorial perfection, avoided these banes to the toilette. Appearance was not all to him, but it was much. He and his valet, Villier, slaved over his toilette. He was thin as a herring bone, with straight brown hair. His coiffure did not follow the latest style. He preferred to set the fashion. During his Byronic phase he had curled a lock to dangle over his forehead. During his gothic phase when he had achieved fame with his novel, Shadows on the Wall, he had grown his hair long. When writing a novel featuring a spy, he had it trimmed to a military cut that ill-suited his thin face.
And during his last phase while preparing Shadows for presentation as a play at Drury Lane, he had worn it long again and made a cake of himself by wearing florid cravats and waistcoats. Now that he had decided to relinquish the preparation of Shadows to professionals and take up engraving, he and Villier were trying to decide what coiffeur would suit. Much would depend, too, on the hero of his next novel.
“I’ll take Black,” Coffen said, undismayed. “He’s on thorns to see the cottage.”
“If it’s uninhabitable, you can stay with us on Marine Parade till you find lodgings,” Corinne said. “Mrs. Ballard is not coming with us. She says the air doesn’t agree with her.” Mrs. Ballard, the poor relation of her first husband, had been her companion before she married Luten, and remained on as her dresser.
“With Black and Fitz and my valet it’d be too many, but thankee anyhow,” Coffen replied. “I’ll stay at the hotel with Prance. Now don’t poker up, Prance. I don’t mean share a room.” He looked around at his friends and said, “I know you and Luten are going for a rest, Corinne, but do you plan to swim as well?”
“No, the water will be too cold. I was used to swim like a fish in Ireland.” It was there that a seventeen year old Corinne Clare had caught the eye of Lord deCo
ventry, three times her age. A marriage had been arranged between them by her papa for the price of five thousand pounds. DeCoventry had whisked her off to London, given her a coat of town bronze, and they had lived happily together for four years, at which time he expired, without ever achieving the son he had hoped for. Three years later, after much bickering, she had accepted an offer from deCoventry’s extremely eligible, handsome cousin, Lord Luten, who had fallen in love with her the first time he met her.
It wasn’t just the charming contrast between her jet black hair and creamy skin, often compared to a cameo, that attracted him. It was her sparkling green eyes that could spit fire when she was angry and glow like emeralds when she was happy that won his heart. And her Irish charm and temper that kept it alive over the years, even in the midst of their frequent battles.
Prance admired her voice, which he compared to a cello played in a velvet tunnel. Coffen liked that she wasn’t stiff-rumped like most society ladies.
“And you will be busy preparing sketches for you next novel, Prance?” she asked, as he had mentioned it ten or twelve times.
“And studying the art of engraving,” he added, looking around to see what effect this new wrinkle had on his listeners. Polite nods were his only reward and he added, “I hope to be taken on as Herr Stoeffel’s pupil. He is a master etcher, in the classical Mantegna-Durer tradition, you know.”
With his pockets jingling from the sales of his gothic novel and with his publisher, Murray, forecasting an equally rosy outcome for his spy novel, he could afford it, and if necessary hire a few lads to do the messy work. All that acid and ink would play havoc with one’s toilette. On his one trip to a London engraver, he had been unhappy to see the man wore a leather apron and was sweating like a navy. Even his active imagination could not envisage a new style based on a leather apron.
Coffen yawned and said, “I plan to spend a deal of time driving my new rig. The grays take a bit of getting used to. Frisky devils. Prinney claims to have made the run from London to Brighton in four hours. I hope to best his time.” This curricle was a marvel of yellow paint and silver appointments.
“And to think I passed on that delightful trip,” Prance said, rolling his eyes.
“We’d like you both to come to us for dinner tomorrow evening,” Corinne said. “We’ll make plans for our vacation. It will be wonderful to have two whole weeks to just relax by the seaside.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” Coffen said. “If you tell Mrs. Partridge I’m coming, I daresay she’ll make some of her gingerbread with raisins for me.”
“Of course they’ll tell her,” Prance pointed out. “One can hardly land guests in for dinner without telling the cook.”
“I’ll mention the gingerbread,” Corinne said, as the guests rose to take their leave. “I’m really looking forward to this holiday. It will be nice to get Luten away from his work at the House.”
“And away from murder and other mayhem,” Prance added, blissfully unaware of the murder and mayhem awaiting them at Brighton.
Chapter Two
Coffen’s first stop in Brighton after he had settled in at the Royal Crescent Hotel on the Marine Parade was the office of Enright and Weir to meet Cyrus Bolger’s solicitor, Mr. Weir. Black accompanied him. They had some little difficulty finding the place on an out-of-the-way, rundown side street in an old part of town called the Lanes. Coffen had not Prance’s facility with language, but it occurred to him as soon as he laid eyes on the aging lawyer that Weary would have been a more apt name than Weir. Everything about him seemed blasted with antiquity, from the faded jacket on his stooping shoulders to his lank gray hair and the bags under his tired eyes. The office, like its occupant, had seen better days, some half a century ago. He didn’t appear to have a clerk, or need one.
“Ah, Mr. Pattle,” he said, struggling up from his chair to give his hand a limp shake when Coffen identified himself. Black got only a nod. “Allow me to offer my condolences on the untimely passing of your uncle.”
“Untimely?” Coffen said. “He was pretty old.”
“Old?” Mr. Weir, who looked to be in his late seventies or eighties, gave a modest tee hee. “Devil a bit of it. He was a young gaffer. Hardly a day over sixty-five. No, ‘twas an accident that took him.”
“Is that so? What kind of an accident?”
“A blow on the head, due to a fall. It seems he was carrying a heavy ladder and stumbled. There were some tools on the floor that we figured he tripped over. Seems he was planning to repair something in the room. Anyhow he stumbled, the ladder hit him a knock on the pate and did for him. I think myself it was that loose mirror over the mantle he was going to tighten up, but we’ll never know now. ‘Twas a great long ladder. It would have given him a severe knock on the pate.”
“I wonder why he didn’t have his footman do the repair,” Coffen said.
“Oh he didn’t have a footman, Mr. Pattle,” Weir said, shocked at such a notion.
“Ah, no he wouldn’t, now I come to think of it.”
“Mr. Bolger looked after himself. He was a wonderful man for frying up a steak or potato. He had a charwoman who used to come in to take out the laundry and wash up occasionally. Old Mrs. Beazely, she does for half a dozen of the old folks. These are Mr. Bolger’s personal and business papers.”
He indicated a thin folder on his desk. “Nothing of much interest, business-wise. Birth certificate, the deed for the cottage. He didn’t use banks, so there is nothing of that sort. You’ve come to see your inheritance. I have the key right here on my desk.” The key, the folder and a cup of tea were the only items on the desk, suggesting no excess of business. He handed Coffen the folder. “The house is just ‘round the corner. We can walk. No point wasting good money on hiring a hackney.”
Coffen’s expectations fell even lower to hear the cottage was in this part of town. “I have my rig out front,” he said.
“Ah, well in that case ...” But when they looked at the sporting carriage, it was clear to them both that either a ladder or a crane would be required to get Weir into the high seat. It would also be uncomfortably crowded as Black had accompanied him in the two-seater.
“If it’s closeby we might as well walk,” Coffen said. “You drive, Black. Just follow us.”
Weir set off at a foot-dragging pace. The house was just around the corner, in a narrow, brick-paved twisting alley called Nile Street. When they stopped, Black drove up and parked. Not two yards from the cottage was a low dive called the Brithelmston Tavern. “Brighton was used to be called Brithelmston in the olden days,” Weir informed him. “Some called it Brightelmstone, but in the Domesday Book ‘twas written thus, Brithelmston.”
“Been here that long, has it?” Coffen said.
“Tee hee. That is your little joke, Mr. Pattle. No, the tavern is new. It’s not older than two or three hundred years. Your cottage, of course, dates from a later era. This was thought to be an up and coming part of town when your uncle bought the place. Mostly wooden houses where the fishermen lived but Brighton real estate increased in value when Prinney came to town, bringing all the smarts and swells down from London. A few of the little houses were torn down and these finer houses like yours put up.”
Coffen looked down the street at a few other decent houses surrounded by hovels and said, “Pity more of them didn’t come to Nile Street.” His inheritance was a plain brick building with two small columns in front and a fanlit door. It was two stories high with perhaps four or five bedrooms. The windows were intact but filthy. The black paint on the front door had faded to mouse gray and begun to crack. Three small holes in the door suggested a door knocker had been removed.
“Vandals hereabouts?” Coffen asked, pointing to the missing knocker.
“No, ‘twas Bolger took the knocker off. He didn’t like being disturbed.”
“Sounds like a dashed hermit.”
Weir ignored this and said, “You won’t find many second stories in this part of town. Just these
few newer houses. Shall we go in?”
He thrust a large key into the lock. The door opened with a squawk and Weir led them inside. The expected odour of stale air and worse did not assail their nostrils. “You’ll see all is snug and dry,” Weir told him, pointing carefully to avoid calling attention to the watermarks around the windows. “Some of the places nearer the water are full of mold and rot. Damaging to the plaster, mold.”
The place had the usual rooms — drawing room, dining room, a study and a small back room that had been set up as a kitchen with four bedchambers above. All had been furnished at some time within the past twenty or thirty years with cheap pieces. The drawing room had some aspirations to style in the way of a fireplace with a carved mantelpiece, fancy plasterwork on the ceiling and a chandelier whose crystals hadn’t been polished in decades.
Weir pointed to a smeared brown spot on the floor in the middle of the carpetless room, shook his head and said, “That spot right there is where Mr. Bolger drew his last breath, Mr. Pattle.”
Black, glancing down, said, “That looks like a blood stain.”
“It is. The carpet was bloodied. I had it taken away so as not to upset Mr. Pattle. It was beyond recovery, and threadbare in any case. Mrs. Beazely ought to have washed up the blood. I’ll have to speak to her. She’s getting on, poor soul. She’s the one notified me the next morning when she found Mr. Bolger dead on the floor. His burial orders were in his will, and I took care of that as you were so long in answering my letter notifying you, Mr. Pattle.”
Black usually took charge of Mr. Pattle’s mail, but they had been extremely busy at the time in a case that involved both a robbery at Luten’s house and a murder. The letter said only that Mr. Cyrus Bolger had passed away and left Mr. Pattle a house in Brighton and Mr. Weir looked forward to seeing Mr. Pattle at his earliest convenience. Coffen had put the visit off as he was planning to come to Brighton soon.
The story of Bolger’s sad death did not increase Coffen’s desire to inhabit the house. He had assumed it would not be located in a slum, and that it would be on the water or at least have a sea view. Mr. Weir spoke on of possible improvements to the house, but as Coffen had already decided to sell the place, he took little interest in it. Black, who had some familiarity with a lack of grandeur, took a keener interest.