The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  MR CREPOLIUS SNUSHALL rose obsequiously until our silhouettes solidified and he realized who we were.

  ‘Miss Mortlock has given strict instructions that you are not to be given access to her father again.’ His voice had a coolness in it today.

  ‘We have not come to look at anyone’s body,’ I told him, perceiving the glimmer of hope that arose within his aged breast.

  ‘You have changed your mind and wish to arrange your own funerals?’

  ‘That is a damnable lie.’ Mr G swept his hat off so flamboyantly that he almost smacked Mr Snushall in the face with it.

  ‘It was a question.’

  ‘Then kindly raise the pitch of your pre-penultimate syllable – funerals,’ he demonstrated, ‘so as to provide an audible question mark in future.’

  My guardian skimmed his hat through the air to settle over the top finial of an empty coat stand.

  Mr Snushall uncoiled from his miserable servile stoop and I was surprised to find him looking down on us with a good four-inch height advantage.

  ‘I think I should like you to leave,’ he declared, his voice distinctly icy now.

  Sidney Grice promenaded round me, his cane tucked under his arm.

  ‘You think?’ I clarified. ‘So you are not sure?’

  ‘I know I would,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘But you said think,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I meant know.’

  ‘Do you really know or do you just think you know?’

  ‘I know.’ The ice became steely.

  ‘They are very different verbs,’ I pondered. ‘Do you find you get your words muddled more as you get older? It can—’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mr Snushall challenged.

  ‘I am trying to ascertain how certain you are in your wishes,’ I answered.

  ‘I meant him.’ He pointed accusingly at Sidney Grice, who had gone behind the desk and was leafing though a thick black-bound volume with black-margined pages.

  ‘That is very rude of you,’ I reprimanded.

  ‘It is more than rude.’ Mr Snushall tried to pass by me to get at his book, but I sidestepped.

  ‘I was talking about your manners,’ I informed the undertaker, ‘interrupting me mid-sentence to try start a conversation with another person over my shoulder. Is this the way you treat all your customers?’

  ‘I have clients, not customers,’ Snushall corrected me.

  ‘She does that to me sometimes.’ Mr G turned another page. ‘It is almost annoying.’

  ‘And neither of you are customers or clients.’ The undertaker barged me aside, rushed to where Mr G stood and snatched the book away. ‘That is confidential.’

  ‘Tell us about the man you buried in Highgate Cemetery with the headstone reading God Shall Know You,’ I invited the undertaker.

  ‘I shall not.’

  ‘Not even for money?’ I opened my handbag, hoping he did not spot my flask and cigarette case.

  ‘Not for ten thousand pounds.’ He threw back his head.

  And I clipped my bag shut. ‘I was not thinking of going that high.’

  ‘You do a lot of work for charity,’ Sidney Grice commented.

  ‘I do my Christian duty.’ Mr Snushall closed the book.

  ‘But not for free.’ My guardian frowned. ‘The Methodist Women’s Charity for the Decent Interment of the Unidentified Poor pays you a goodly sum to bury anonymous bodies found on the street.’

  ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ Snushall quoted piously.

  ‘Do they attend the funerals?’ My right breast hurt from him elbowing me but I could not rub it in their presence.

  ‘Their cases are poor people. I give them simple caskets and a marked plot, but it is not an area where gentlefolk would care to visit.’ Mr Snushall put the book in a drawer and locked it.

  ‘Saint Cecil’s Cemetery in Limehouse,’ Mr G stated. ‘You are right about one thing, Mr Crepolius Jimmy Snushall, boxer and burier of human carcasses—’

  ‘Boxer?’ Mr Snushall shrieked.

  ‘No lady would want to go to Saint Cecil’s,’ Sidney Grice agreed, ‘nor could she – because it does not exist.’

  Veins rose in cords on Mr Snushall’s temples and up his balding dome. ‘You will leave here immediately or I shall call the police.’

  Whoever swept up did not get right into the corners, I noted. It was probably another of Dorolius’s duties.

  ‘We shall leave here, though not immediately, and we may call the police ourselves.’ I gave him a playful nudge. ‘This is your last chance to tell us about that funeral before we become unkind.’

  The cords engorged and became varicose. ‘You cannot threaten me.’

  ‘It is strange, is it not, how people often tell me how I cannot do what I have already done,’ Mr G chatted to me.

  ‘I have found that of late too,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps it is a London habit. I never noticed it in Parbold.’

  Mr Snushall reached for a bell pull, but, before he got there, Sidney Grice’s cane swished out and jabbed into the undertaker’s chest, pushing him back against the wall.

  ‘Explain to this sinister grovelling parasite what this cane can do.’ My guardian swung his cane like a pendulum.

  ‘Is it the one Molly dropped last week and made you angry?’

  Mr G’s eyes narrowed. ‘It is.’

  ‘That,’ I announced, ‘is the Grice Patent-pending Compres-sed Gas Gun. If Mr Grice presses a button on the handle it will fire a lead ball some half-inch in diameter through your coat, waistcoat, shirt, undershirt, skin, fat (though you do not have much of that), ribs, intercostal muscles – they are the ones between your ribs – pericardium and heart, reversing that sequence to exit by way of your back, passing through your nasty flock wallpaper—’

  ‘That cost two guineas a roll,’ he protested.

  ‘To lodge, considerably flattened by its journey, in that wall,’ I finished.

  ‘Oh,’ Mr Snushall’s veins fluttered.

  ‘Pull down the blind, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘The one saying closed?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘You cannot do that,’ Snushall said angrily.

  ‘This is exactly what we were talking about,’ I reminded him. ‘I already have.’

  ‘I saw him kill a mad dog once.’ I wiggled my nose. ‘It was very messy.’ I felt the paper. ‘You could have got this flock at half the price in Grinton’s.’

  The veins collapsed. ‘But that’s where I got it.’

  ‘Perhaps they recognized a fellow swindler when they saw him,’ I suggested.

  ‘How dare you?’ There was appreciably less conviction in the undertaker’s indignation.

  Sidney Grice adjusted his grip and Snushall squirmed.

  ‘I will see you again soon.’ I gave the undertaker a little wave as I pulled back the curtain.

  ‘You cannot go in there,’ he protested.

  ‘There you go again,’ I remarked lightly.

  Dorolius Lacrissimus lay asleep in an elm coffin. He leaped up guiltily as I bid him a good morning.

  ‘Mr Snushall says you are to show me the pit,’ I told him, but Dorolius was not convinced. ‘Five shillings says he did.’ I took out my purse.

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘You’ve got a funny way of ’aggling.’

  ‘It works,’ I told him.

  But he still hesitated. ‘I ’ad betta check wiv Mr S,’ he decided, clambering over the side.

  ‘Perhaps I should come and explain how I discovered you.’

  Dorolius jumped to the floor.

  ‘Cor,’ he said admiringly. ‘First you tell me a lie; then you try to bribe me; then you ’aggle over the price; now you’re resortin’ to blackmail, and all in a minute. You’re my kind of gal, you are.’

  ‘Perhaps a bit old for you.’ I smiled.

  ‘Yeah,’ he looked me up and down, ‘and plain.’ He patted down his trousers, which had a fine sawdust on them.
‘Foller me.’

  I follered Dorolius down the corridor and through a back door, across a yard stacked high with long box shapes covered in tarpaulin. I did not need my guardian to guess what they were.

  ‘’Ere we are.’ Dorolius opened a door. ‘Only don’t go in.’

  I could hardly see into the unlit interior, but I just made out a rectangular shape with a slabbed path all the way round it, similar to an ornamental garden pond. It was full almost to the top with a white powder. A draught ran over the surface and tossed it at me. I stepped back, covering my nose and closing my eyes.

  ‘Is that what burned your fingers?’ I spluttered when I was a couple of yards away.

  ‘’Orrible stuff, ain’t it.’ Dorolius closed the door. ‘You won’t get me in trouble?’

  Those big innocent-wicked eyes regarded me.

  ‘I shall not,’ I promised.

  ‘’Ow about that four bob then?’

  I patted him on the shoulder and gave him five.

  57

  ✥

  Heaven and the Man in Black

  SIDNEY GRICE STILL had the undertaker pinned to the wall when I re-emerged.

  ‘Quicklime,’ I announced.

  ‘The b-builders left it there,’ Mr Snushall stuttered. ‘I use it for g-getting rid of rats.’

  ‘You can lock away your diary but my memory is not so easily disposed of,’ my godfather said. ‘The last time that those well-meaning Methodist ladies arranged for a body to be delivered here was yesterday afternoon.’ He prodded the cane in and Snushall squealed. ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Already buried at Saint Cecil’s.’ Snushall was sweating now. ‘I do not know exactly where that is because I never attend the charitable funerals myself.’ An idea struck him. ‘Perhaps the men steal the bodies.’ He jerked his elbows about. ‘There’s a good market in the medical profession and second-hand coffins are easy to sell at the lower end of the—’

  ‘Professor Duffy,’ I broke in.

  ‘Who?’ Snushall’s lower lip quivered.

  ‘The anatomist. He told us that you approached him with an offer to sell him bodies for dissection.’

  ‘The rotten snitchy swine.’ Snushall clenched his teeth.

  I coughed, partly to hide a laugh at his choice of words and partly because of the powder I had inhaled. It had been a lucky guess anyway.

  ‘Do we really have to get men to rake through the lime?’ Mr G sighed.

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ Crepolius Snushall decided. ‘What is your price?’

  ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but,’ Sidney Grice replied.

  ‘And you will not call the police?’

  ‘Not if you cooperate fully,’ Mr G promised. ‘But, if you attempt to hide any information or tell even the tiniest of porkies, Miss Middleton will be straight out of that door summoning a constable at the top of her shrill and gratingly raucous voice.’

  I held my tongue.

  ‘Very well,’ the undertaker agreed, ‘but may I sit down first?’

  ‘You may.’ Sidney Grice lowered his cane. ‘But we shall stand.’

  I would quite like to have rested my legs but I decided not to squabble.

  ‘Keep your arms on the inexpertly tooled top of your shoddily fashioned counterfeit Versailles escritoire where I can see them,’ Mr G commanded. ‘I have been attacked by five undertakers in the past and could not fail to be impressed by the range of armaments at their disposal – needles, scalpels, catheters and syringes. My left knee will take a good while to decay after being injected with embalming fluid during the Blankenberge Flower Festival.’

  ‘Can we get on with this?’ Crepolius Snushall asked agitatedly.

  ‘Please do.’ I looked at a picture of six angels carrying a soul to heaven. Their expressions were doubtless meant to be pious, but to me they looked rather bilious and their charge had his eyes rolled up as if the experience were the last word in tedium.

  Snushall harrumphed, ‘My name is Crepolius James Snushall of Greystones House, 23—’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Sidney Grice waved his stick and Snushall ducked. ‘You are not making a statement in court. This is an informal chat, though admittedly it may end in you concluding your life in a disease-riddled gaol.’

  ‘Or being shot,’ I added.

  ‘Ask him some leading questions, Miss Middleton,’ my guardian urged, ‘or we shall be here for the rest of the month.’

  I rested my hands on the desk and tried to fix the undertaker’s gaze but he looked shiftily away.

  ‘So you admit that you accepted money from a charitable organization to give people proper funerals, but disposed of the bodies in that lime pit at the back of these premises?’

  ‘If you put it like that,’ Snushall mumbled.

  ‘Yes or no?’ Mr G rapped.

  The yes was just about audible.

  ‘So what happened to the man now in Highgate?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know all the background.’ Snushall interlinked his hands. ‘I believe he was found in the basement of an old building. He could not be identified and so he was brought here at the request of the ladies. One had been to see if he was a lost nephew but he was not.’

  ‘And her name was?’ Mr G put his knuckles on the desk and stared at the undertaker too.

  Crepolius closed his palms, thumbs on top as my friend Barney had taught me to imitate the hoot of an owl. ‘Mrs Fitz-something...’

  ‘You will have to do better than that,’ Mr G warned.

  ‘Williams, Fitzwilliams, I think. The society will know.’

  ‘It is not for you to know what they will know,’ Sidney Grice reprimanded him. ‘Recommence but do try to be more entertaining. You have no concept of how tedious it can be dragging information out of a criminal. It is like pulling a ball of brown string through a puncture in the lid of a red box, and not knowing whether it will snag or when it will end.’

  ‘Criminal?’ Snushall whispered.

  ‘A vulgar criminal,’ I confirmed.

  ‘It would appear that you have broken at least fourteen clauses of the 1872 Disposal of Human Remains Act, Great Britain,’ Mr G said sternly. ‘Shall I enumerate?’

  ‘Perhaps later.’ I hurriedly postponed his lecture. ‘So you collected the body from the morgue?’

  ‘My men did. I never go there – horrid place.’ The undertaker quivered. ‘The House of Death they call it.’

  ‘And…?’ I urged, feeling we had hardly drawn the first inch of that imaginary string out yet.

  Crepolius Snushall hinged his arms up and I waited for his avian imitation to begin, but he lowered his head and nestled the bridge of his nose between his thumbs.

  ‘I instructed the men to put him in the disposal chamber.’

  ‘The pit?’ I clarified, and his head rose and fell. ‘And…?’

  ‘Something strange happened.’ Snushall looked up in awe. ‘His body did not dissolve.’ He hinged his arms back down. ‘I thought perhaps the lime was wet. It goes off when it is, but it was dry—’

  ‘As a bone,’ Mr G contributed.

  ‘His skin started to burn,’ Mr Snushall related, ‘but then it stopped.’ And so did he.

  ‘And then?’ I prodded.

  ‘He sat up,’ Crepolius said. ‘I have seen it before. The reaction of a body with quicklime produces a lot of heat. I have even seen a corpse burst into flames. Sometimes the heat makes the muscles contract. We call it horse riding. It is not usually a problem because as the body is eaten away it collapses into the powder and is completely destroyed. This one was different, though. Something stopped him being burned up. The men were spooked—’

  ‘Like horses,’ I said to myself.

  ‘One of them quit to join the Salvation Army,’ the undertaker recounted sadly. ‘He was a good man up until then.’

  ‘The body had been preserved in wet quicklime for years,’ I told him. ‘I imagine that made the skin resistant.’

  ‘I lost sleep
over that one,’ Snushall admitted miserably. ‘I even considered actually doing what I was supposed to and burying him at my own expense.’

  ‘How awful for you,’ I mocked and Mr Snushall met my eyes fleetingly, grateful for my understanding.

  ‘We have two inches of string and at least a yard to go.’ Mr G straightened impatiently.

  ‘Then my saviour came.’

  ‘I hope you are not going to tell me you had a vision of Jesus.’ Sidney Grice went to inspect the picture.

  ‘My saviour was a man in black.’ Snushall rolled his eyes up, but looked no more virtuous than the transported soul. ‘He came and asked to see the body. I told him it was not ready for viewing, but he would not be deflected. He said he thought it might be his estranged brother-in-law. So we got the body out of the pit, hosed it down and laid it with extra pillows in a casket with a hinged top section in the lid for viewing. The man came in and I knew at once that he recognized the body – he gave that special small jump that they do – and he stood for a long time, and once he touched the departed’s hair, just that special small stroke. Then we went back to my office and he gave me his instructions. He claimed not to know who the man was, but said he reminded him of somebody that he could not help and so he wanted the best for this one – solid oak, lead-lined, all the trimmings and a white marble stone with those words, God Shall Know You. I gave him a price and he hardly listened, said he would come back the next day and pay.’

  ‘And did he?’ Mr G looked behind the picture.

  ‘Every penny.’

  ‘Did he or anybody else attend the funeral?’ I asked.

  ‘Just him.’ Snushall traced the course of a newly arisen blood vessel on his brow.

  ‘Describe this ebony-clad benefactor in extraordinary detail.’ Mr G rested his cane on the desk and the undertaker leaned sideways out of the line of fire.

  ‘There is not much to describe,’ he said.

  Sidney Grice aligned his cane with Crepolius’s heart.

  I tried to help. ‘Was he young or old, dark- or fair-haired?’

  ‘It is difficult to say.’ Beads popped up on his face again. ‘I would say from his voice he was not very young and not very old. He stood quite straight. But, as I tried to tell you, he was completely covered in black, top to bottom, and a scarf wrapped around his face so all I could see was his eyes and not very much of them.’