The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

‘Some might think that congratulations are in order, Dr William Walter Wilfred Wickery Warren Whelkhorn.’ Mr G slapped the page-turner down so hard that I was surprised it did not shatter. ‘You have set a homicidal lunatic upon the greatest personal detective in an empire upon which the sun is always setting.’

  Dr Whelkhorn struggled to reconstruct his dignity. ‘You may go now. I have work to do.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Sidney Grice agreed. ‘You have a great deal of professional ignorance to dispel and knowledge to acquire.’

  ‘And a fugitive patient to look for,’ I reminded him as he hustled us out.

  40

  ✥

  The Wages of Justice and the Burning of Bodies

  A HOSPITAL VAN WAS about to set off to collect a prisoner from the station. Despite and because of Sidney Grice’s peremptory manner, the driver agreed to give us a lift so long as my guardian sat in the back with the warders.

  ‘That was productive,’ he announced, rejoining me on the platform. ‘After I tactfully exposited to my travelling companions how incompetent they were, they expressed the hope that one day they might be looking after me.’

  ‘I am sure they meant it kindly,’ I comforted him.

  ‘I do not doubt it,’ he agreed in all seriousness.

  The train arrived on time and we settled into an otherwise empty compartment near the front.

  ‘Why should Angelina Innocenti want to kill you?’ I asked.

  My guardian shook his insulated flask sadly. ‘Probably because I refused to help her defence.’

  ‘Did you believe her to be guilty?’ I tried to ignore my craving for a cigarette.

  ‘More importantly than that –’ he pulled out the cork and upended his bottle, unwilling to admit to himself that it was empty – ‘I believed her to be poor.’

  ‘And you would not help her because she could not afford your outrageous fees?’

  A drip fell on to the back of his hand just as it had that day in my cell.

  ‘You are hiding something from me,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Sidney Grice told me very quietly. ‘I am hiding a great many things.’ And then, ‘If ever you get out of here, do you want to leave our home?’

  ‘Where would I go?’ I was fascinated by an arc of blood vessels on the back of his hand. ‘You are my protector and you called it our home.’

  My guardian patted my shoulder awkwardly and I looked down to see a drop of water falling for ever until it burst.

  ‘Quite so.’ Mr G slipped his flask away. ‘I had another reason but, before you give vent to a bout of Middletonian self-righteousness, perhaps you would be so delightful as to satisfy my curiosity. How often do the police, the clergy, Members of Parliament or the admirals of our unparalleled fleet work for no remuneration?’

  He spread out his copy of the Bloomsbury Bugle.

  ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ I replied grumpily, for it was difficult to live with a man who was always right, as my best friend Harriet often affirmed. I opened my Henry James novel.

  ‘According to this, Dr William Price has been arrested for attempting to incinerate his dead son,’ I was informed from behind the curtain of newsprint.

  ‘I have no objection to cremation,’ I chatted. ‘It is common in India and shows every respect for the dead.’

  ‘I care not a jot about what they do to cadavers three thousand, six hundred and fourteen miles away.’ He lowered the screen. ‘But to burn anyone here is an abomination.’

  I resisted the temptation to hurl my book at him. ‘You think an Englishman’s body is worth more than that of an Indian?’

  Mr G considered my question. ‘A maharajah’s corpse might be ransomed for more than that of one of the street vermin one stumbles over daily.’ He forced his eyelids apart and dropped his glass eye into his palm. ‘But I am more concerned with the criminological aspects. A body burned may be innumerable clues destroyed.’ He shook out a lavender patch. ‘How on earth could I have solved the Camden Vampire Mystery if those remains had been no more than eight bucketfuls of ashes?’

  He raised the curtain and I reflected how Harriet had told me I was lucky. Her husband only thought he was infallible. My guardian very nearly was.

  ‘What does that say on the back page of the Bugle?’ I asked and he tsked.

  ‘Even you might have observed that I have got no further than page three and am trying to read a report on the effects of vibrations from our underground railways on the habits of earthworms.’ Nonetheless he folded his paper and turned it round. ‘Horse Predicted the Murder of Reclusive Mr Nathan Mortlock,’ he narrated. ‘I might have known. It was scribbled by the juvenile hand of your drinking companion, the Trumpeter.’

  It was true that Traf Trumpington had bought me brandy once when I was upset by the murder of the Reverend Jackaman, but I had regarded him with nothing but suspicion since he wrote scurrilous innuendoes about my guardian and myself. I decided to let Sidney Grice’s barb pass.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Mr G thrust the paper at me and I scanned the four columns.

  ‘Mr Gerald Feather, a Bloomsbury coal merchant, claims that his horse Megan has psychic powers because she was spooked—’

  My guardian pulled a sour face. ‘How loathsome that last word is. I believe it is Dutch in origin but expropriated by those renegades who describe themselves revoltingly as,’ he swallowed, ‘Americans.’

  ‘Just as the day before the Garstang family was massacred, Boadicea – the horse belonging to Mr Nig, a purveyor of spirits – stampeded, when he was lifting a crate of sherry from his cart, the same thing happened to the coalseller’s horse, Megan, the day after Nathan Mortlock met his end.’ I précised and skimmed through the article. ‘He says Megan has always been a placid animal and never pays any attention to shouts, the torments of street urchins or the noises of traffic, but she bolted in Burton Terrace on that one occasion.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Sidney Grice brightened briefly.

  ‘Surely you do not believe the story,’ I protested. ‘She is probably getting old and he wants to sell her to a travelling show – like that monkey who was supposed to be able to sing.’

  ‘How cynical you are becoming.’ My guardian observed me sorrowfully. ‘I am delighted to note. Still, he may be worth interviewing.’

  ‘You cannot be serious,’ I objected.

  ‘I am not in the habit of manufacturing comic entertainments whilst being propelled along the London and South Western Railway track.’ He snatched his paper back. ‘I am struck by the claims that the first horse predicted death but the second detected it.’ He ripped out the article and stuffed it into his satchel. ‘If the owner of the unfortunately named Megan were inventing the story, surely he would pretend his mare had foretold the murder too.’

  We rattled over the points.

  ‘So now you are a woman of means,’ George Pound said, ‘and therefore beyond my reach.’

  I forced myself to concentrate.

  ‘Do you think Easterly was telling the truth about having an itch?’

  ‘Not entirely.’ My guardian unhooked the leather window strap. ‘He lied about staying in his chair. In the process of examining his shoes I dabbed the soles with a slow-setting ink.’

  ‘The metal bar,’ I recollected.

  ‘The Grice Patent Marking Rod.’ He pulled the strap up a notch to close the window.

  ‘So he left marks on the floor.’ I wished it had been a corridor train, then I could have gone up the corridor for a smoke.

  ‘The process of deduction goes some way beyond repeating what you have been told, but in a slightly different way,’ he expounded. ‘And, to save your tongue from further unnecessary exercise, the exuberantly dubbed Sou’ Easterly Gale Nutter left evidence that he had walked some distance along the hall away from the pot of peacock feathers. Unfortunately, the ink was exhausted after five paces but the marks were close enough together to suggest that he was creeping.’
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  My guardian folded the newspaper with great care.

  ‘He may have been trying to walk off his cramp.’ I suggested. ‘There are several innocent explanations for his action.’

  ‘But none for his lies,’ Sidney Grice retorted. ‘I shall interrogate him about it tomorrow after my appointment with one Joseph Penton, known to his customers as Bookie Joe.’

  ‘What time are we setting out?’ I enquired.

  Sidney Grice clapped the back of his head and his eye shot into his other hand. The suddenness of it still unnerved me sometimes, with that dark cavity staring into my mind.

  ‘We?’ he cried in astonishment.

  ‘But we always question witnesses together,’ I protested and waited for him to list the many times when we had not.

  My guardian polished his eye. ‘My dear March Lillian Constance Middleton, I have a much more important task for you than that.’ He glanced at my book. ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘The Portrait of a Lady,’ I told him.

  ‘Not a description of you then.’ He sniffed and returned to his worms.

  41

  ✥

  The Man in the Shrubbery

  IT WAS NOT difficult to find where Gerald Feather lived – the Bugle had said he was from Francis Street Mews – but I hesitated to go along the narrow cobbled alley, ankle-deep in filthy straw mucked out from the stables either side and clogging the wide central gutter. The last time I had been there I was kidnapped and thought that I was about to be killed. At least this time there was no van waiting to rush me away.

  A stocky man, even shorter than I but solidly constructed, leaned against a wall, hands in overcoat pockets. He was sucking on a long clay pipe but still managing to whistle – ‘My Mother was a Mermaid in the Sea’ – and he had just got to the part about cockles and bokkles when he looked up. A grey-green cloth drooped over the top of his head, but it was not this makeshift cap that obscured his face. His hair was so long and tousled and entangled with his whiskers, beard and moustaches that you might have thought a pitchfork of garden waste had been deposited over him.

  The pipe wiggled in a figure of eight. ‘There don’t be no carriages for ’ire down ’ere,’ emerged from the undergrowth.

  ‘I am looking for Gerald Feather,’ I told him.

  If he had eyes they were well hidden and I marvelled that he could see me through the untamed shrubbery in front of them.

  ‘Why?’ It sounded like he spat but nothing broke to the surface.

  ‘I am interested in his horse.’

  I moved closer to the man to allow a handcart to pass. There was the shape of a small body under the sacking and the youth who pushed it was sobbing.

  ‘Why?’

  I noticed that the pipe was unlit and the bowl empty apart from a crust of tar.

  ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ I wanted one myself if only to fumigate the air between us.

  ‘Ciggies is for girlies.’

  ‘I wish you would tell my guardian that,’ I said.

  ‘And who might ’e be then?’

  The cart passed and I stepped gratefully back but into something that squelched unpleasantly.

  ‘Mr Sidney Grice,’ I told him, pulling my foot out of whatever it was.

  ‘Old Puddin’?’ emerged from the undergrowth. ‘Why’s ’e so interested in my Meg?’

  ‘I only know he is willing to pay…’ I struggled to remember what Mr G had told me about the rates for extracting information, ‘a shilling for your account now.’

  A sickening guttural sound bubbled somewhere deep inside that wilderness. ‘That geezer from the paper gave me ten bob and a quart of brandy for my story.’

  I could not imagine Traf, with all his experience at extracting information, paying more than sixpence, though the brandy sounded more his style. I had my flask of gin on me but I could not bear the thought of it passing through that filthy mass into whatever existed as a mouth within it.

  ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘He only gave me a shilling. I am sorry to have wasted your time.’

  I knew from experience that most hagglers will let you walk at least six paces before relenting, but I was still turning away when an arm shot out in front of me like a ship’s boom in a storm.

  ‘A shillin’ it is then,’ he said gruffly, ‘but don’t you be lettin’ on I spoke for so cheap.’

  I unclipped my handbag. ‘Can I see Megan?’

  ‘That’s a two-shillin’ job, that is.’

  I clipped up my bag. ‘What a shame.’

  He gripped my cloak. ‘But seein’ as I feels sorry for you with your looks an’ all, we’ll throw ’er in for free.’

  The man stepped aside and opened the top half of a stable door, and an elderly dappled horse poked her head out, blinking at another ashen London sky.

  ‘When you said she was spooked, what exactly happened?’

  Whatever I had trodden into was still trying to glue me to the cobbles.

  ‘I never said spooked,’ he complained.

  I patted the mare’s nose. ‘So what happened?’

  The coalman recited at a gallop, ‘I’m deliverin’ a load to 28 Burton Cressint next door, but they ’ave the road up so I ’ave to park up alongside the Gaslight Lane ’ouse, Geth-what’s-it’s-name.’ He took a breath before cantering on. ‘I’d just emptied my first sack and started back when Megan puts ’er ears back and bolts. She’s round the Cressint and ’alfway up Flaxman Terrace to Bibberough Street wiv the baker’s boys goadin’ ’er on afore I catches up and calms her down. The end. Pay up.’

  ‘And she has never done anything like that before?’

  ‘Not never,’ he asserted and stuck out his paw.

  ‘What sort of accent is that?’ I raised my arms.

  ‘Where?’ he looked about in expectation of an accent snuffling up the alley.

  Feeling more than a little self-conscious, I flapped my cloak like a demented crow and jumped towards Megan, shouting, ‘Boo!’ at the top of my voice. Megan regarded me politely and I opened my bag again. A shilling for her master and a potato for his horse.

  42

  ✥

  Sarus Crane and the Caspian Sea

  CHERRY MORTLOCK WROTE me a letter. She was sorry that she had thrown Spirit off her like that, but she was distracted by my guardian’s and Molly’s behaviour on top of all the grief and confusion that she was suffering already. She hoped that Spirit had not been injured or used up any of her lives.

  Cherry had gone to see Charlemagne Cochran on Baker Street and found him to be a charming man, most reassuring and efficient. His fees were almost as high as Sidney Grice’s but he promised to bring the matter to a speedy conclusion. She was meeting him at Gethsemane herself that afternoon and he was bringing a team of experts with him to search the house from top to bottom.

  She hoped that she and I might remain on amicable terms but never to see my guardian again.

  You should quit 125 Gower Street, March, for Mr Grice will bring nothing but misery and peril into your life, she wrote.

  Cherry Mortlock was by no means the first person to give me that advice.

  Dorna Berry had written: I am afraid for you, March. You must leave that house. Leave it today or Sidney Grice will destroy you, just as he destroyed me and just as surely as he murdered your mother.

  But I did not want to leave. Where would I go? He was my protector and one of the only two men I had left to love.

  ‘Nobody could love you like I do,’ Edward had said as we sat by the lazy green river watching a Sarus Crane, so tall with its grey-blue plumage, its face and neck ruby red, foraging with its steely spike of a beak for freshwater crabs on the opposite bank. ‘Only I know that it is your imperfections that make you perfect.’

  And we kissed until I thought we would melt together, and walked hand in hand along the bank. That was before Edward tripped on the root of a jujube tree and fell into the river, dragging me in with him.

  ‘Come, March.’ Mr G bustled int
o the study. ‘We must leave in four minutes.’

  ‘But where are we going?’

  ‘Euston Station,’ he replied with exemplary forbearance, for there was nowhere else we could possibly be going.

  ‘Oh, but where are we going to?’ I was not really dressed for a long journey.

  ‘Eus-ton Sta-tion,’ he repeated loudly and slowly. ‘Is that too complicated a concept for your feminine cranium to absorb? Dear lord!’ Sidney Grice dashed to the mantelpiece. ‘One and a half minutes slow.’

  He hinged open the front of the clock.

  I tried again. ‘Where… are… we… going… to… from Eus-ton Sta-tion?’

  ‘To 125 Gower Street.’

  I swallowed a small scream. ‘You will be happy to learn, beloved Godfather, that it has not escaped my notice that we are already at 125 Gower Street.’ I spoke through clenched teeth. ‘So why, in the name of Lucifer, are we go-ing to Eus-ton Sta-tion?’

  He edged the hand forward.

  ‘Because we have an appointment, though not with his satanic majesty.’

  ‘You did not tell me that.’ I folded Cherry’s letter and Sidney Grice tutted.

  ‘If you had had the foresight to force open the top middle drawer of my desk, you would have seen it in my diary.’ He closed the glass front. ‘I must get that fool of a so-called clock repairer back. That is the second time in eight years it has gone wrong.’

  He raced out of the room and I did not like to tell him that I had adjusted the time because I thought it was a fraction fast.

  *

  A hansom arrived almost immediately, but Sidney Grice sent it away as there was a plaque on the side advertising Lilly’s Ladies’ Nervous Tonics.

  ‘But it’s the top mustard,’ the cabby protested.

  ‘Then put it on your ham,’ Mr G advised. ‘I shall not be seen to endorse any product, least of all one for hysterical females. It is bad enough living with three of them.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ I closed the door while we waited for the next knock.