The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  There were two hefty brass bolts on the inside of the door but they hung loose now, the screws wrenched out of the battered woodwork, the brackets on the jamb into which they would have slotted torn out, the upper dangling by a bent screw, the lower lying on the floor. The white porcelain handles had been placed with their barrel in a change tray on the dressing table.

  Mr G brought out his notebook and began to make sketches with his mechanical pencil. I crossed the room and opened the wardrobe. There was a strong smell of camphor and its hanging rail was crammed with coats and trousers and a long red dressing gown, all in pristine condition.

  ‘Mrs Mortlock was always ordering clothes for Mr Mortlock from his tailors.’ Hesketh came up behind me. ‘But he wore few of them. He was a dapper man in his younger days and spent more than he could afford looking fashionable but, after the deaths of the Garstangs, he lost interest in such things.’ He touched a smoking jacket hanging over the back of a chair. ‘Most of the time he wore that.’

  I searched the pockets – a tobacco pouch in one, a briar in the other, downy scraps of lint in both. Perhaps I should have been collecting samples of the fluff but I could think of no reason to do so.

  ‘Take a look in Mrs Fortitude Mortlock’s room.’ Sidney Grice was scratching at the paintwork with his knife. I squeezed past and he tutted. ‘Your skirts have removed at least four splinters and deposited two threads.’

  And I saw that the cotton was plucked but not irreparably. There were actually five splinters. I picked them out. ‘There you are. Have them back.’ And I placed them in his hand.

  ‘Thank you.’ My godfather accepted them. ‘I take it you do not want these returned.’ He picked the threads off a ragged edge.

  ‘I think I can manage without,’ I assured Mr G. But he was already storing them away and all at once I felt like a suspect.

  Hesketh followed me through and turned up the gas. The bed was still there, though covered in a dustsheet as were the dresser, chest of drawers and wardrobe. An enamelled mug stood on the washstand with a bar of soap in it and there was still a dusty puddle of water in the jug. There was a bar of partly dissolved soap in the jug and a brush behind it. A razor strop hung from a hook in the side.

  ‘Not Mrs Mortlock’s, I assume.’ I ran a hand down the ragged edge and nicked myself.

  ‘I kept it there to prepare Mr Mortlock’s shaving things in the morning.’ Hesketh offered me a handkerchief and I bound my finger. It was bleeding freely.

  ‘How did it get damaged?’ I asked and Hesketh shuddered violently as if doused with iced water.

  ‘I can only assume the murderer did it trying to sharpen the razor.’ He spoke the words as a schoolboy might recite a Latin verse which meant nothing to him.

  The drawers were full of folded underclothes. I let the dustsheet drop and something attracted my eye near the window drape: a man’s green stocking. I held it up.

  ‘Veronique often brings – brought – the laundry up at night.’ Hesketh took it from me. ‘And rather than disturb Mr Mortlock, she would leave it on the bed until the morning.’ He rolled it into a tight tube. ‘I suppose Miss Cherry will have it all cleared now.’

  He helped me to lift a sheet and look inside the wardrobe. It was still packed with dresses, bright silks and flowery shawls.

  ‘How pretty.’ I picked out a cerise scarf.

  ‘She had so few opportunities to wear them,’ he said.

  ‘Have you had any communication from her?’ I picked up a pink slipper from the base. Fortitude must have had tiny feet.

  ‘None, miss,’ he answered ruefully.

  I had a sudden thought. ‘I wonder why the police did not take the strop.’

  ‘It is not for me to say,’ Hesketh said, though it was evident that he would, ‘but how can I put it?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Inspector Quigley is a proud man, and I think when I suggested he might want to take the strop he decided to put me in my place by telling me he had no interest in such trifles.’

  That sounded like the Quigley I knew and loathed. I tested the shutters. They were securely barred. ‘What happened to this?’ The left-hand curtain cord had been cut short. I wondered at how thick it was, but Quigley had been right about one thing – the length of material required for such a lofty room made the drapes exceptionally heavy.

  ‘I had not noticed that before but we have always used the shutters rather than the curtains.’ Hesketh checked the other one. ‘This side looks all right.’

  ‘Did you like Mr Mortlock, Hesketh?’

  The valet crossed his hands at hip level. ‘When he was a child and young man, very much. Master Nathan was a great favourite with the family and the staff.’ A wistful smile appeared. ‘He was such a mischievous child – never really naughty but full of pranks. Even as a young man he would get into scrapes, but he had such winning manners that he always talked his way out of trouble.’

  ‘Except on the night of the murders,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I believe he was intoxicated on that occasion. Even so, he was too old for such behaviour, especially as he was a family man by then.’ Hesketh’s cheek started up again, but he kept his hands crossed and under control. ‘His watch was stolen and he got into a fight with a man he thought had taken it. The man’s accomplice joined in and Mr Nathan’s friend, Danny Filbert, did likewise.’

  ‘Filbert spelled with an F as with the nut?’ I clarified.

  ‘I believe so, miss.’

  ‘What happened next?’ I looked in a silver trinket box but it was empty.

  ‘A lookout warned the pickpockets and when the police arrived they made themselves scarce,’ the valet resumed his account, ‘by which time Mr Nathan was so enraged that he fell into an argument with the policeman, then tried to push him away, and both of them were arrested for being drunk and disorderly.’ Hesketh smoothed out a crease in the carpet with his foot. ‘As things turned out, it almost certainly saved his life.’

  I kneeled – no easy feat in a bustle – and opened the bottom drawer. ‘So he spent the night in a Marylebone Police Station cell?’

  ‘And was given a two-pound fine by the magistrate in the morning,’ Hesketh confirmed. ‘Danny had no money and would have had a short prison sentence, but Mr Nathan paid his fine for him.’

  ‘He was fortunate that his wallet was not taken as well then.’ I took out the neatly pressed white chemises and a pink petticoat. There was nothing underneath.

  ‘Indeed, miss.’ Hesketh genuflected to help me replace the clothes. He smelled freshly of coal-tar soap. ‘And Mr Nathan was even luckier than that. He got his watch back at the beginning of this year, though in a rather ghoulish way.’ Together we pulled out the stiff second drawer. ‘It was found on the body of a man in the cellar of the North Wing.’

  ‘The right hand side of Gethsemane as you face the house.’ I clarified.

  ‘Indeed, miss.’

  ‘How strange.’ There was nothing under the camisoles. ‘Who found him?’

  ‘A homeless family hoping to find shelter for the night, miss. The mother told a constable.’ Hesketh slid the drawer back. ‘Might I ask what you are looking for?’

  I was not going to admit that I did not have the slightest idea. Sidney Grice could recognize a clue through a brick wall but, as he was fond of reminding me, if the brick wall was the clue I would not recognize it as such.

  ‘Evidence,’ I answered confidently and felt my way through the next drawer. ‘Did Mrs Mortlock take anything with her?’

  ‘Only her jewellery and there was not a great deal of that.’ Hesketh stood up stiffly.

  ‘Were you surprised when she left?’ I made a half-hearted inspection of the top drawer and marvelled that anybody could need so many handkerchiefs. Perhaps Fortitude did a lot of crying, I speculated, taken aback at my own callousness.

  Hesketh picked a dead moth out. Sidney Grice might have ranted at him for destroying evidence, but I made no comment as he let it fall.

  ‘I was surprised
that she left without Miss Charity.’ Hesketh offered me his arm but I rose unaided. He would never have done the same to my guardian and I resented being treated as if I were helpless, though it would have made my ascent less of a struggle.

  ‘This must be a miserable house to live in.’ I steadied myself on the chest. ‘And some of you must be frightened. Why has nobody left?’

  ‘Where would we go, miss?’ Hesketh looked at the shutters with no hope of seeing through them. ‘We are all under investigation and who would admit a murder suspect into their homes, let alone employ one?’

  Mr G was industriously measuring everything measurable when we rejoined him.

  ‘I have found one piece of broken razor blade.’ I held up the bloodied handkerchief.

  ‘So I see.’ He pencilled a few figures in his notebook. ‘And so I heard. I shall take a look later.’ He recorded the length of a diagonal scratch on a floorboard. ‘But first I need to check all the locks and bars.’ He opened his watch. ‘The act will consume fourteen minutes and I trust no one else to do it. Go down and talk to those two servants again, Miss Middleton. They will be more relaxed with you. Pretend to be pleasant.’

  ‘I shall try,’ I promised.

  ‘You,’ Mr G told Hesketh, ‘shall stand exactly where you are with your hands where I can see them.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Hesketh interlocked his fingers in front of himself.

  ‘I heard your intercourse, Miss Middleton, and one of the questions you asked was intelligent.’ Sidney Grice leafed back though his book, at least four pages of hand-drawn columns crammed with tiny rows of numbers.

  ‘Why would it not be? I am an intelligent woman,’ I retorted, stung by his patronizing tone. ‘Which one?’

  He reeled his tape measure in. ‘An intelligent woman would know the answer to that.’

  ‘I am flattered that you trust me to walk downstairs,’ I carped.

  Sidney Grice dropped the measure into his satchel.

  ‘Look upon it as a test of your initiative,’ he challenged, unaware of how close I was to accidentally treading on his fingers.

  And, on the way down, I heard an urgent message being passed.

  ‘Hold your nerve, Veronique. They don’t know anything.’

  29

  ✥

  The Courtesan and the Mouse

  EASTERLY LOOKED AT me expectantly as I returned.

  ‘Am Hi to be untied, miss?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not yet, I am afraid,’ I told him.

  There was no point, I suspected, in asking about what I heard. He would only deny it and be put on guard. Better, I felt, to follow Sidney Grice’s instructions and pretend to be pleasant.

  ‘Only Hi don’t feel right sitting while a lady stands.’

  ‘Is that better?’ I sat on the end of an ornate boot box.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Where did you get your accent from?’ I asked. ‘It is not like any Yorkshire I have heard.’

  The box was very nodular.

  ‘Hi taught myself.’ Easterly lifted his chin proudly and I saw that it was dimpled, just like Edward’s. ‘By copying a toff. It is how Mr Grice and you speak, miss.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ I murmured. ‘How do you get your clothes on over that?’

  Easterly tapped his plaster. ‘Hi have cut the sleeve hoff my shirt and Veronique sews and hun-sews my coat sleeve every morning and night.’

  ‘Did you hear or see anything different on the night Mr Mortlock was murdered?’

  ‘Not ha sound or sight, miss.’ He wriggled his neck.

  ‘Did your employer act any differently?’ A raised ornamentation was digging in the back of my thigh – quite a trick through all my layers of cotton.

  ‘He wasn’t right the last week or so.’ The footman twisted his neck in a circle. ‘Not since the policeman came.’

  ‘Did you like Mr Mortlock?’ I struggled not to wriggle.

  Easterly pulled his lips down. ‘Not much. He was a quiet cove – surly, you might say – but lord, he had a temper.’

  ‘Was he ever violent?’

  ‘Not that Hi saw, miss, but he had such a tongue.’ He wriggled his jaw. ‘Though Hi never knew him shout at Mr Hesketh. Hi think Mr Mortlock had ha soft spot for him.’

  I watched the footman as he answered me, and tried to think what I should be deducing. Mr G would have spotted a significant rip in a trouser leg or a nick in his fingerplate that would have solved everything, but all I could see was a pleasant man, discomfited and doing his best to cope with the situation.

  ‘What sort of things did he get angry about?’ I pressed.

  ‘Anything and heverything and sometimes nothing.’ Easterly shifted as much as he dared. ‘His paper wasn’t ironed properly. There was a cobweb that he must have crawled under the table to find. Whoever was around got it in the neck.’

  I wondered if he would have found Sidney Grice any more amiable an employer, but I only said, ‘Thank you, Easterly. If you can think of anything else, please let us know.’

  I rose gratefully.

  ‘How long am Hi to stay like this, miss?’

  He looked so miserable that I would willingly have snapped the thread for him.

  ‘Until Mr Grice decides otherwise.’ I returned to the sitting room.

  Veronique was still in her place.

  ‘Have you had your tea?’ I could see she had not.

  ‘I do not like tea ’ow the English drink it with cow’s milk.’ She had little lively eyes that reminded me of a mouse.

  ‘Then why did you add it?’

  Her fingers were slender and pink.

  ‘Mrs Emmett she say it is polite.’

  ‘Mr Grice does not have milk,’ I reminded her, and pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘Is Mr Grice polite?’

  ‘Not very.’ I stifled a laugh and sat to face her. ‘What happened that night, Veronique?’

  She puffed. ‘I do not know, miss. I swear it. But I am foreign and so nobody like me and so everyone suspect me.’

  ‘I think Easterly likes you,’ I teased.

  ‘I think so too.’ Veronique went pink. ‘But even ’e sometimes make fun and imitate ’ow I am speaking.’

  ‘Your English is very good.’

  She blinked rapidly. ‘Not too good, I ’ope. Nobody want a French maid who speak like a – ’ow you say? – cockney.’

  I laughed. ‘I do not think you sound remotely like a Londoner. How long have you lived in England?’

  ‘Five years,’ she said. ‘Five years too many. They are not nice people. Only last week ’Esketh unlock the garden so I can walk in it and, after ’e go, an old crone she shout and swear and ’it me wiz a ’orse dropping.’

  ‘She was probably inebriated,’ I suggested. ‘Did you like Mr Mortlock?’

  Veronique snorted. ‘’E is ’orrible. I ’ate ’im.’

  ‘Enough to kill him?’ I asked softly and she shrugged.

  ‘Sometime but I do not do it.’

  I felt the teapot. It was cold. ‘Why did you hate him so much?’

  ‘’E try to – ’ow you say? – take advantage of ’is position.’ Veronique’s fingers closed round the arm of the chair.

  ‘Did he force himself on you?’

  She piffed dismissively. ‘Not with blows. ’E start off being nice – too nice – telling me ’ow good I am at my job, how smart I look and then ’ow pretty. ’E give me an ’alf day then say I must spend it with ’im in the park. Then ’e keep ringing for me when ’e don’t need me and find excuses for me to fetch things to ’is room. ’E put ’is ’and on my arm.’ She patted her sleeve to demonstrate. ‘And when I pull away, ’e tell me I must not be so stand-offish and remember my place. I tell ’im my place is to be a maid not a… courtesan. You know the word?’

  ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘Did you never think of leaving? French maids are always much sought after.’

  ‘And ’ow do I get a character?’ Veroni
que weaved her right hand through the air. ‘It is bad enough I do not know the story of this ’ouse when I come.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ I asked. ‘Will you stay with Miss Charity?’

  Veronique glanced nervously back towards the hallway and lowered her voice.

  ‘I go ’ome,’ she declared, ‘never to brighten your shores again.’

  ‘Not until I say you might,’ Sidney Grice told her as he entered the room with Hesketh close behind. ‘Come, Miss Middleton. If you have finished tittle-tattling, we have work to do.’ He pointed at the valet. ‘After Miss Middleton vacates that chair you shall occupy the one to the left of it.’

  ‘Why not this chair?’ I got up.

  ‘Because it is an offence to decency,’ my godfather informed me, feeling the quality of Veronique’s sleeve. ‘That seat is still warm.’

  I went round the table. ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘I always find something,’ Sidney Grice told me as I followed him into the hall. ‘The house is secure from ground to roof.’

  ‘Hi could have told you that, sir,’ Easterly volunteered from his chair.

  Mr G pursed his lips. ‘It is neither safe nor logical to assume that what you could have told me and what you would have told me, and what I might have believed, are one and the same thing,’ he retorted without pausing in his stride. ‘I never make assumptions and I am never illogical, though I am frequently unsafe. Why,’ his cane whipped out like a rapier, ‘have you burst your restraints?’

  And I saw that Easterly was trying to hold the ends together.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ he apologized ruefully, ‘but Hi had to stand up to get this.’ The tip of a peacock feather was sprouting from under his plaster. ‘To scratch my wrist. It was driving me mad.’

  ‘If only you could have been driven mad that easily,’ Sidney Grice said to me drily. ‘I shall not do something and you shall not do something else.’ He marched jerkily down the corridor without pausing in his prophecy. ‘I shall not waste further thread and you shall not quit your throne without my express permission again.’