The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘With presents?’ Molly skipped sideways.

  Perkins arrived with a steaming enamelled mug and surveyed the room uncertainly.

  ‘Sergeant Horwich was just about to ’ave a brew.’ He put it down. ‘So ’e’d be glad to get it back soon.’

  ‘Observe, Inspector, whilst I demolish the central pillar of your fabricated case against this pleasant, albeit foreign young woman, which I have been given to believe is based on her alleged inexperience in the art of depilation.’

  ‘That means shaving,’ I told the inspector.

  ‘Not alleged, proven.’ Quigley’s tone was more defiant now. ‘Mr Cochran worked that out after neither of you two managed.’ He gingerly stopped clutching himself. ‘He worked out that the razor was all chipped because it had been stropped by someone who didn’t know how to do it. This foreign bitch said she was good with a razor but when she had a go, she near chopped Cochran’s man’s ear off.’

  ‘’E gives me a blunt old raisor and I am nervous for they all shout and tell me I am going to the prison,’ Veronique burst out.

  ‘Then you shall have a chance to redeem yourself.’ Mr G tapped the ebony box. An S and a G were embossed in gold upon it with something between, but I could not tell if they were other initials or ornamentation. ‘My father gave me this on the occasion of my eighteenth birthday.’ He hinged back the lid.

  ‘Looks unused,’ Quigley said suspiciously.

  ‘It looks what it is,’ my guardian agreed amiably. ‘Facial hair is a primitive trait and when the rest of mankind has evolved as far as I, people shall be troubled by it no more.’ He pushed the shaving set towards Veronique. ‘Kindly demonstrate your skills, Miss Bonnay.’

  Veronique approached the box and lifted out an ivory cut-throat. ‘She is very sharp already.’

  ‘Nevertheless I would appreciate it if you would use the strop.’

  Veronique shook out the spiral of brown leather and, without hesitation, hung it by its metal ring over the door handle, pulling it into a long strap by the handle on the other end. Her hand flew as she worked the blade up and down it.

  ‘Note how she twists the razor on to its spine when she changes direction,’ Mr G pointed out, ‘so as not to damage the cutting edge. You may stop now.’ He peered over. ‘A pristine strop and an edge honed to terrifying keenness, I think you will agree, Inspector.’

  Quigley did not seem inclined to agree with anything. He rubbed his signet ring.

  ‘What next?’ Sidney Grice asked Veronique.

  ‘The lather.’ She pronounced the second word with great precision and proceeded to swirl a cylinder of soap in the water and work up a foam with the brush, holding the short wooden handle expertly with a thumb and middle finger.

  ‘Silvertip badger hair,’ my godfather announced, ‘the most expensive on the market because it comes from the white hairs of the aforementioned carnivore and does not have to be bleached. It is reputed to have the least spiky feel of any brush.’

  ‘Not that you would know,’ Quigley sneered.

  ‘Indeed not,’ Mr G agreed cheerily.

  ‘Like a woman,’ Quigley scoffed, but, unlike my guardian, I was not going to let that pass.

  ‘Your observational powers have deserted you, Inspector,’ I noted. ‘I, and these two are like women because we are. Mr Grice is like a man because he is. I shall not tell you, in polite company, what you are.’

  Perkins guffawed.

  ‘Out,’ his superior shouted and he shuffled away. ‘Well, there ain’t no point in shaving Grice then, and I ain’t going to volunteer, nor any of my men.’

  ‘Is Inspector Pound in the station?’ I enquired, not sure that he would submit to such an experiment.

  ‘No need for that.’ Mr G waved airily. ‘We have brought our own customer with us. Take a seat, Molly.’

  Molly jumped in surprise and landed on Quigley’s foot.

  ‘Stupid sow.’ He hopped back as she sat on the wooden chair.

  Molly’s employer took a white cloth from his satchel. ‘Allow me.’ And he tucked it around Molly’s neck.

  ‘Am I to have dinner, sir?’ she enquired hopefully.

  ‘Have you actually been in the room?’ Quigley scorned.

  ‘Oh yes, ’Spector Quickly. I’m surprised as how you didntn’t not notice when I trodded on your toe,’ she reminded him.

  ‘It’s Quigley,’ he snapped.

  ‘What is?’ Molly asked innocently.

  Veronique set to work, spreading a thick lather over Molly’s face jowls and around her mouth.

  ‘It is OK?’ Veronique asked uncertainly.

  Molly’s tongue flicked out and in. ‘Tastes soapy.’

  ‘Like Cook’s potato soup,’ I said automatically, horrified at the indignity to which she was being subjected. And Veronique set to work, standing behind our maid and scraping the thick beard of foam away and wiping it on to the cloth. She moved on to the neck and Molly shifted uneasily.

  ‘Keep still,’ her employer scolded, but, even watching, I could not help but cringe as the blade whipped over her exposed throat.

  Veronique finished on Molly’s upper lip with a flick under the nose and Sidney Grice threw Molly a handkerchief to wipe the last few flecks of lather away.

  Molly was shaken. This was one humiliation too many, I thought.

  ‘Not a scratching,’ Veronique proclaimed proudly, shaking the razor dry, and I held up the box so that Molly could see for herself. Molly took one look and burst into tears.

  I rounded on my godfather. ‘How can you treat her like that?’

  ‘No, it’s lovely,’ Molly wailed. ‘My moustache – it’s gone. Now I wontn’t not keep getting food in it and it wontn’t get snangeled in the baker’s boy’s teeth. Thank you, so much, sir. This is the best birthday present ever and it aintn’t even my birthday.’

  ‘One tiny point,’ Mr G concluded. ‘As I am sure even you noticed, Inspector Norbot Stillith “Sly” Quigley, Miss Bonnay is left-handed whereas the murderer is or was—’

  ‘Get out,’ Quigley raged, ‘the lot of you.’

  Veronique smiled triumphantly and replaced the razor. ‘You ’ave a bit of stubbles – shall I do you next, Inspector?’

  48

  ✥

  The Eye of the Beholder

  SERGEANT HORWICH WAS taking a very rare night off. He had been forced to do an eighteen-hour shift to cover for Sergeant Jonty, who had broken an arm in a game of five-card stud, Sergeant Whittington told us.

  ‘How on earth can you break an arm playing cards?’ I asked.

  ‘You can if you try to chisel Hanratty,’ Whittington promised me.

  ‘Who?’ I had not heard that name before.

  ‘Hagop Hanratty,’ Sidney Grice enlightened me, ‘the product of an Irish father and Armenian mother. Hanratty owns three gin palaces, two theatres and most of the East End streets between them. Jonty was lucky to get away with his arm still attached to his body.’

  ‘It’s only just,’ Whittington grimaced.

  Twister, the station tabby, ran through with a young rat still wriggling in her mouth.

  ‘A present for Inspector Quigley, I hope,’ I commented.

  ‘Run us through the process of booking a prisoner in, Whittington.’ My guardian rested his cane on the desk.

  ‘Gawd, I fought you’d ’ave seen enough of those, Mr Grice.’

  ‘For the lady’s benefit,’ Sidney Grice urged.

  Whittington looked about for another female in the room before realizing that my godfather meant me.

  ‘Well, we takes their names and addresses – if they ’ave one. A lot of ’em ’ere are no fixed abode, or they pretend to be so the missus don’t find out what they’ve been at, ’specially if there’s a dollymop involved.’ Sergeant Whittington picked up his pen. ‘We write them in this book with the time in this column.’ He dotted it with the nib. ‘Then they are taken down and when they come up again I sign them out with the time in this next column. Simple.’
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  ‘Indeed,’ Sidney Grice concurred. ‘Anyone on archives tonight?’

  ‘Arbuckle,’ the sergeant said, ‘but he’s been busy all day looking stuff up for Inspector Pound.’

  ‘Then he will be grateful for something different to do,’ I said, without conviction, but Mr G must have agreed, for he was marching up a corridor on the far side of the desk and down a short flight of steps, along a dark passage and down three more steps, and through the door into a sunken room without so much as a knock.

  ‘Good afternoon, Arbuckle.’ My guardian breezed in.

  The constable was a tall adipose man, almost bald but for one strap of hair about an inch wide, running ear to ear and dyed boot-polish brown.

  ‘Mr Grice.’ He looked up from several stacks of beige envelopes and brown cardboard boxes. ‘I’m rather busy today.’

  ‘Excellent.’ My guardian rubbed his hands. ‘Then you will not wish to waste time looking for an old register.’

  ‘I certainly would not,’ Arbuckle agreed with alacrity.

  ‘Then waste no further time and do it immediately,’ Mr G urged. ‘The latter part of 1872.’

  Arbuckle waved a sheaf of papers. ‘I really don’t have the time. If you could come back in a day or two.’

  Sidney Grice cocked his ear to one side like a thrush listening for a worm. ‘Chatter,’ he bade me. ‘Irritate him until he gives way.’

  ‘About what?’ My mind went blank.

  ‘Frippery and foolishness,’ he said. ‘The sort of nonsense over which you bore me into a stupor.’

  I took a breath. ‘I see that Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poems are coming out in a new collection.’

  Arbuckle sighed. ‘There is nothing new about Rossetti’s verse. Most of it was filched from Swinburne and some of it reads like nursery rhymes. I mean to say, take ’is translation of François Villon’s Ballade des dames du temps jadis. I know you sacrifice something of the rhythmical sense when you transcribe a poem, but he completely loses the flavour for me.’

  ‘I saw a new dress today,’ I began.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Arbuckle perked up. ‘I can’t decide between the Ladies’ Polonaise number one or two myself, though I’m inclined to think the number two a bit fussy but that’s just my personal opinion.’

  I tried again. ‘Verdi—’

  ‘Now don’t start me on Giuseppe.’ Arbuckle chuckled. ‘If—’

  ‘Just find the register,’ Sidney Grice burst out and Constable Arbuckle reached up to a high shelf to his left, and pulled out a dusty red volume with hardly a glance. ‘There you are.’ He sat on a pile of boxes. ‘So what did you make of Traviata? Lord, the passion of that music and what a libretto. I wish I could see it. Me and the wife went through the score, but she can’t hit the top notes and I’m shaky on the basso profundo.’

  ‘I am almost grateful,’ Mr G said and was back up the steps with the register under his arm. ‘Oh, and when you have the time, Constable – by which I mean today – send me all the notes you have on the body from the North Wing of Gethsemane.’

  ‘Bloomin’ liberty,’ Arbuckle boiled as my godfather disappeared.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But that is your vocation, Constable – to keep our liberties blooming.’

  He sat on the top step and I next to him, and he laid the book across our knees just as Maudy Glass and I used to do in the attic at The Grange when we had an exciting story to share.

  ‘September the twenty-first.’ My godfather ran his fingerplate down the fore-edge, slipped it in and flipped the register open at exactly the right page.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘When I was a child I learned to count.’ He stabbed at a line. ‘There we are. Nathan Roptine Mortlock, booked in at two fifteen in the morning. I see he gave 1 Gaslight Lane as his address.’

  ‘I cannot imagine Mr or Mrs Garstang would have been happy if they had seen that in the papers – a resident in their home on trial for affray,’ I commented and leaned over. Our hair touched but Mr G did not recoil. ‘Daniel Filbert – Nathan’s friend. He gives an address in Butcher Street, number 121B.’

  My guardian sniffed. ‘If only the police had known their own district. Butcher Street ends at number 80.’

  ‘So we do not even know if that was his real name.’ He had still not pulled away and I sat squashed up against him, breathing in the fresh scent of his soap.

  Sidney Grice’s left eye took me in and flicked away.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he murmured.

  I caught my breath, unable to quite believe what I had heard.

  ‘I am sorry?’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’ Sidney Grice asked softly. ‘You are not hurting me.’

  ‘I meant, what did you say?’

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he said simply and took my hand in his. ‘You are covering his initials.’

  He lifted my hand away and then I saw it – Uriah Roger Biewtiffle. Mr G let my hand fall.

  ‘Perhaps his parents thought it was a joke,’ I answered automatically and forced myself to concentrate on our task. ‘I see they were both checked out at nine forty-four that morning.’

  I edged away to create a small gap.

  ‘In good time for the ten-thirty sessions.’ He turned the page and the clouds broke briefly, and a white light fell across my guardian’s profile – his thick black backswept hair, his straight thin nose and pale blue eye, his unblemished complexion, full red lips and dimpled chin.

  ‘Dear God.’ I jumped up.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I blustered. ‘I just have a cramp.’

  I brushed past him up to the corridor and paced about to pretend to improve the blood flow.

  ‘Which leg?’ he asked with something akin to sympathy.

  ‘The left.’

  ‘Try limping on that one then,’ he advised and closed the book. ‘Take this back to archives. The exercise will set you aright.’

  If only it would.

  ‘Not sure about the ring cycle,’ Constable Arbuckle greeted me. ‘I ’ave ’eard it can’t be beaten for dramatic spectacle, but it doesn’t have the melodic inventiveness of Verdi. Why, miss, whatever is wrong? You’ve gone all blotchy.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I lied for the second time. ‘It is just that I cannot bear it when people speak ill of Wagner.’

  49

  ✥

  The Mathematics of Murder

  SIDNEY GRICE HAD gone back to the desk.

  ‘’Arris should be down there.’ Sergeant Whittington was busy trying to balance a penny on its rim on top of his inkwell. ‘And if ’e’s dozing give ’im a kick. ’E’s in enough trouble with Inspector Quigley for falling asleep when he was supposed to be guarding that place in Gaslight Lane.’ He gestured to the deserted foyer. ‘I never known it so quiet. Don’t no one commit no crimes no more?’

  ‘Only with the English language.’ Mr G picked up his cane.

  ‘I was lookin’ at that,’ Whittington told him. ‘Is that the one what shoots poisoned arrows at people?’

  ‘It is the one I use as a walking stick,’ my guardian told him.

  ‘What else does it do?’ I hurried after him down another corridor.

  Mr G stopped and wound the top of his cane several turns. He pressed a tiny screw, the handle went into reverse and the air was filled with the sound of a music box – ‘Oh, for the Wings of a Dove’.

  ‘But you hate music.’ I listened for a while as the tiny tuned teeth pinged and the clockwork whirred. ‘What on earth is it for?’

  ‘It confuses people,’ he expounded.

  ‘I think you are quite good at that already.’

  We walked on.

  ‘Stop humming.’ He switched his walking cane off, turning ninety degrees on his heel, and leading the way down the long stone stairs that so many men and women had passed in shame and despair.

  Constable Harris stirred as he heard our footfalls on the worn stone and tried, but failed, to look like he had no
t been dozing.

  ‘Make your choice,’ Harris invited as I joined them on the worn flagstone floor. ‘’Cept number five what Nettles is ’aving a kip in, and number two ’cause Mrs Vishnovski had had the pick of that.’

  Harris had the most naturally red hair I had ever seen. In the rare London sunlight it looked like a burning bush – he was never able to flatten it – and, even in the gloom of the prisoners’ block, it had a wispy halo around it. Children had been known to knock off his helmet just for the sake of a view.

  I saw two hands closed round the bars in the observation hatch.

  ‘How do you do?’ the occupant inquired charmingly, an elderly woman with white hair piled busby fashion and sprouting bamboo sticks from it. ‘I am Mrs Malgorzata Vishnovski. I am quite safe but very dangerous, and I not speak a word of English.’

  Her accent sounded Edinburghian to me.

  ‘Do you know why you are here?’ I asked and Mrs Vishnovski clapped her hands in delight.

  ‘At last somebody who speaks Polish,’ she chortled. ‘Tell these men that I am innocent, quite safe but very dangerous, and I not speak a word of English.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘You ’ad better tell us.’ Harris winked. ‘We’ll get no peace until you do.’

  ‘This lady,’ I began.

  ‘No! No! No!’ Mrs Vishnovski howled. ‘In English – Ennng-lish – understand?’

  What the hell? I thought.

  ‘Burbley burbley burble,’ I said.

  ‘And the rest,’ Mrs Vishnovski urged.

  ‘Burbley—’

  ‘No, you’ve told them that already.’ She kicked the inside of her door.

  ‘Bibbley boppley boopy,’ I told them and Harris responded wisely.

  ‘I shall let my superiors know at once.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to translate that for the prisoner’s benefit,’ my guardian suggested blithely.

  I refrained from the first response that came to mind and turned back to Mrs Vishnovski who, at three feet away, must have heard every word.

  ‘Zippy zappy—’