The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Are you all right, ladies?’

  ‘Is that you, Hesketh?’ Cherry called weakly.

  ‘Never!’ the voice shrieked. ‘Never-never-never-never all right.’ And then, in a long rasping breath, ‘Murderer.’

  ‘Is anybody out there with you, Hesketh?’

  ‘Only Easterly, miss. Shall we come in?’

  ‘The door is wedged.’ I realized that I was already sitting upright. ‘I am coming.’

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and a cackle flew about like a trapped bird of prey. My skin prickled.

  ‘No.’ Cherry clutched at my skirt. ‘I do not think that is Hesketh. It does not sound right. The thing is using his voice.’

  There was a crash that shook the room.

  ‘The ceiling!’ Cherry cried. ‘It is on the ceiling.’

  I looked up and a fissure had appeared. And whatever she said next was lost, drowned by a piercing howl, and the fissure widened and webbed out into a maze of cracks, and the cracks opened.

  I jumped off the bed, dragging Cherry over on to her side as she clung to me.

  ‘They are everywhere,’ she gasped. ‘Do not let them take me to hell, March.’

  Whatever or whoever was out there was hammering on the door.

  ‘Get off the bed,’ I shouted, grasping her wrist to haul her after me.

  And Cherry Mortlock’s face burst into blood.

  88

  ✥

  The Deluge

  I STOOD TRANSFIXED as Cherry’s grip fell away. Her eyes trickled gore and another gout splattered on her breast.

  ‘Come on,’ I exhorted and heaved her half off.

  ‘My face!’

  ‘It is not your blood.’ I yanked her towards me.

  A chunk of plaster broke away, slamming into Cherry’s pillow, and an eruption of dust rained over us.

  ‘We are coming in.’ The door juddered.

  A loud splintering crack was followed by an arm that broke through above us, thrashing through broken lathes, the hand searching for something that was not there. We cowered from it. And then a head, long greying taupe hair, white with powder, hanging upside down, and the head turned round further than was humanly possible, blood showering. And I saw the face, the mouth opening and closing like a broken puppet, an oranged tongue flicking snakelike in and out, spitting goblets of crimson. The arm rose jerkily. There was a snap and the ceiling sagged, and the creature with it.

  The door squealed inwards an inch.

  ‘Put your hand through,’ Hesketh’s voice commanded.

  ‘But I might never gerrit back,’ Easterly objected in broadest Yorkshire.

  ‘Just do it, man. Your mistress is in danger, and Miss Middleton.’

  I tried to go to help, but Cherry clung on in terror of the obscenity that hung twitching over us. Something moved behind it, an umbra creeping through the hole.

  ‘Oh God, there are more of them.’ Cherry’s fingers dug into my arm.

  ‘I can’t gerrit.’ Easterly’s voice. ‘’Ang on.’

  The arm thrashed and the mouth stretched in an endless wheezing exhalation, and the eyes rolled, and a foul crimsoned tar vomited out of that mouth in three violent expulsions.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss Mortlock?’ Sidney Grice appeared in the crater.

  The door burst open.

  ‘Oh, thank the stars you’re safe, Miss Mortlock,’ Easterly gasped breathlessly.

  Hesketh stumbled in. He breathed in relief when he saw us standing there, but then he looked up.

  ‘Oh my sweet Lord Jesus.’ Hesketh staggered two steps back and one small step forward. ‘It can’t be.’

  And it seemed to me that the eyes drifted towards Hesketh and fixed upon him, and the arm reached out in supplication, with a final sigh, before it juddered down and the creature fell limp.

  89

  ✥

  The Cobweb and Cold Ashes

  SIDNEY GRICE SURVEYED the body and the occupants of the room.

  ‘Why can it not be, Hesketh?’ he called down from the loft.

  ‘She is in Broadmoor,’ Hesketh answered automatically.

  I went to check Easterly, who was crumpled on the floor.

  ‘Do not say any more.’ Mr G took the cover off his portable safety lamp, illuminating himself like the portrait of a saint. ‘All of you await my presence in the sitting room. On the way down, Miss Middleton will collect Molly and Mademoiselle Bonnay, assuming that neither one nor both of them is dead.’

  My guardian moved sideways, watching his feet carefully, until he was just a tiny sea of light, the tide going out and leaving only the woman suspended in death through the wreckage.

  ‘What is happening?’ Cherry spoke like a woman in the dream she doubtless hoped this was.

  Easterly got up groggily.

  ‘Mr Grice will explain.’ I forced myself to sound confident as I guided her towards the door with a gentle pressure on her back. And, once I had herded them on to the lower flight of stairs, I went to where the two maids had been lodged.

  ‘Look after your mistress,’ I instructed the men.

  The door was open a fraction and I knew at once that something was amiss, for the room was in darkness. I pushed the door cautiously open and stopped in my tracks. Molly lay sprawled face down off the bed, her head resting on a rug, and Veronique lay over the other side, also face down and her lower half over the side.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, miss.’ Molly looked up. ‘I was just teaching Vernornical to play Tip and Toe, where she touches my foot and I reach under the bed to touch hers, only we cantn’t not quite reach. If you lied under we could all—’

  ‘Why is the candle out?’ I asked.

  ‘I knock it over playing ’er Jump Backwards game.’ Veronique rolled over. ‘And she ’as been teaching me ’ow to speak better, aintn’t you not, Molly?’

  ‘Betterer,’ Molly tutored patiently.

  ‘You are both to come into the corridor at once,’ I instructed, and left them to untangle themselves.

  Cherry, Hesketh and Easterly were lost in their own thoughts when I rejoined them. I took Cherry into the bathroom, where she stood like a helpless child as I rinsed her off as best I could.

  ‘Now we shall go down,’ I told the assembly. ‘You first, Hesketh, then Miss Mortlock and me.’

  Cherry took my hand again.

  I cannot have been the only one desperate to run out of Gethsemane and get as far away as possible, but I was determined to keep things orderly as we trooped into the sitting room.

  There was a rattle in the hall and the sound of the front door opening. We all looked at each other.

  ‘Shall I go?’ Molly offered. ‘I’m good at answerering doors. I even do it sometimes.’

  ‘You will both sit at the table,’ I directed.

  ‘Allow me, miss.’ Easterly peeked out. ‘Ho, it’s you.’

  ‘I am fully aware of that.’ The door shut and Sidney Grice came in, wearing his eye patch.

  His clothes were crumpled and heavy with plaster. A cobweb heavy with dust formed an epaulette over his coat. His hair was peppered grey and his face as grubby as a mischievous schoolboy’s.

  ‘To whom were you referring?’ He went directly to the valet.

  ‘Angelina Innocenti,’ Hesketh replied. ‘I would know her anywhere.’

  ‘But Hi thought she was hin that mad prison,’ Easterly objected.

  ‘She escaped,’ I said.

  Cherry shot round. ‘And when did you know this?’

  ‘Nine thousand, three hundred and fourteen minutes ago,’ my guardian calculated.

  ‘When we went to Broadmoor Hospital,’ I clarified.

  ‘And you did not see fit to inform me?’ Her voice was diamond hard. ‘The madwoman who killed all the household here came back to repeat her acts, and nobody even told me she was on the loose?’

  ‘I did not think she meant to harm you,’ I responded feebly.

  ‘It occurred to me that she might,’ my guardian
admitted nonchalantly, ‘but I dismissed the idea as fanciful.’

  ‘But…’ Cherry gawped incredulously, ‘she has just tried to—’

  ‘Frighten your father,’ Mr G interrupted her.

  Cherry quivered with emotion. ‘How can you say that?’ She brushed her sleeve distractedly. ‘You must be as mad as she.’

  ‘I do not think the alleged Angelina Innocenti kept up with the news during her incarceration.’ Sidney Grice patted his own sleeve, creating a mini dust storm. ‘For, as I followed her along the loft spaces, weaving with greater caution between the spikes than she was eventually to do, I heard her muttering to herself, I’ll get you, Nathan Mortlock.’

  ‘But how did you get up there?’ I asked. ‘The hatch is still secure. I looked when we went up before.’

  ‘The same way that she did,’ my godfather replied. ‘There is scaffolding inside the end of the north wing now to stop it collapsing inwards. That part of the house has no floors and the basement was flooded by a burst water main during the explosion, so it is not occupied by the parasitic poor. They have already stolen some of the struts but it was an easy climb, even for a woman. What remains of the loft runs the length of the wing and – since Charlatan Cochran obligingly removed the wall – from thence into what proved to be Senorita Innocenti’s deathtrap. She slipped on a rafter and impaled herself through the abdomen.’

  Cherry gasped. ‘What a horrible way to die.’

  ‘Why did you say the alleged Angelina Innocenti?’ I backtracked before my godfather told her he could think of fourteen worse.

  ‘The woman’s lack of money was not the only reason that I refused to help her.’ Mr G touched his dimple. ‘She was no more Spanish than the Kaiser is Chinese – which, incidentally, he is not – but she would not admit it. I could not represent the interests of a client who was so patently and clumsily lying to me.’

  ‘So who was she really?’ I asked.

  ‘Does that actually matter at the moment?’ Cherry burst out. ‘She is hanging dead through my ceiling.’

  Molly glanced up, rubbed her eyes and chuckled. ‘No, she aintn’t, miss. That’s just a spider.’

  ‘Since you are so sensitive about the matter, we shall deal with that first.’ Sidney Grice surveyed his soiled features in the mantel mirror and straightened his eye patch, which had slipped upwards. ‘With your gracious permission, dear Miss Mortlock, I shall send the ostensibly youthful Mr Sou’ Easterly Gale Nutter on a mission of great import but little personal peril.’ The patch rose again. ‘You are to go immediately and directly to Marylebone Police Station and draw the attention of one Inspector Pound to the extraordinary turn of events in Mademoiselle Bonnay’s boudoir this very night. Impress upon him that I sent you. Goodbye and Godspeed.’

  ‘Here.’ Hesketh gave Easterly a few coins from a brown leather wallet, and the footman set out.

  ‘Why not Inspector Quigley?’ Cherry asked. ‘I do not like him, but surely this is his case.’

  Mr G held up his hands with the left thumb tucked away. ‘I have nine pressing reasons for my action, only two of which need concern you, and the first you have partially answered yourself. Quigley distresses you and it distresses me to see you distressed.’

  ‘I did not think you cared,’ Cherry remarked acidly.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Sidney Grice assured her. ‘When you are distressed you become very annoying.’ He fanned out his fingers. ‘Second, this death relates more directly to the case of the Garstang murders, which is more rightly in Pound’s province.’ He curled up his fingers one by one. ‘And now I am going to say something embarrassing to Miss Middleton. There is a sliver of cedar lath in your rodential hair.’

  ‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle,’ I retorted and my godfather chewed the matter over.

  ‘I choose not to,’ he decided at last.

  Cherry sat in an armchair by the cold ashes.

  ‘Perhaps Veronique and Molly could make us some tea,’ I suggested, to my guardian’s approval. And, after we had consumed that tea speechlessly, he announced, ‘I shall adjourn to scrutinize the cooling cadaver so inelegantly and inconveniently lolling upstairs.’

  Cherry tried the pot but it was empty.

  ‘Stay with me.’ She held out her hand and, as I took it, I heard the door open and George Pound’s voice. ‘In the attic, you say?’

  ‘Hi shall show you the way, Hinspector.’

  And I heard footsteps go by, Easterly’s first and then those of the man I had thought to walk beside.

  90

  ✥

  The Ocean of Fears

  I DREW THE drapes back a few inches. The night was turning grey outside and the trees were taking shape across the way.

  Hesketh reported that the body was being removed and Inspector Pound had advised us to stay where we were with the door closed. We heard other men being admitted, at least three to judge by the voices and heavy boots.

  ‘We need a ladder,’ somebody said, and a low voice made a comment and there was raucous laughter.

  ‘Show some respect,’ Pound reprimanded. ‘Go and find a ladder, Perkins. See if they have one where they’re rebuilding that house next door where the trench is. If not, knock on a few doors. You go with him, Green. You two come up with me.’

  The noises became more distant and the sounds of the city awaking from its troubled slumbers – for London never truly sleeps – grew louder: a wagon rumbled past, carrying a covered mound, with three children running after it, trying to steal some of whatever was under the tarpaulin. And Cherry Mortlock stirred as if she too had been dreaming.

  ‘I must leave here, March,’ she said. ‘Even if I am unable to sell this house, I cannot live in it. I have always hated this place and what it did to the Garstangs and their poor servants, as well as what it did to my father in life and death.’ She pulled her hand away. ‘And now that awful mad woman.’ She squeezed the bridge of her nose between both hands in prayer. ‘Even if it is all over, how could I possibly be happy here?’

  Cherry took my hand again to save herself from drowning in the ocean of her fears.

  ‘And you are prepared to give up your Trust-fund income by leaving the house?’ I queried.

  ‘I can get by on very little.’

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked, for it is usually the people with money who think they do not need it.

  Her fingers were long and fine and beautifully manicured, with marble-white crescent moons.

  ‘I cannot rely upon Maria Feltner to put me up for ever. I shall sleep in Fabian Le Bon’s studio.’ And then she added defensively, ‘He stays with friends when I am there.’

  I smiled. ‘I am not Mr Grice.’

  ‘Nobody is Mr Grice.’ Cherry tossed her head. ‘Is he really like that all the time?’

  ‘Sometimes he is better,’ I assured her. ‘Sometimes worse. What will happen to your servants?’

  Cherry closed her eyes. ‘I have not been able to pay them properly since Daddy… my father died, and I cannot until I am granted probate. They can stay here if they wish.’

  ‘I cannot imagine that Veronique will,’ I said.

  ‘Then I will see if Fabian can find or borrow another couch for his studio. He is very resourceful.’ Cherry’s grip relaxed.

  An omnibus loomed, the passengers blurred by the wet air.

  ‘Will you marry him?’ I asked.

  ‘This may shock you.’ Cherry watched a stray dog darting around the wheels. ‘But Fabian does not hold with marriage. He says it turns women into possessions, stamped with their owners’ names.’

  I was getting cramp from leaning towards her and eased gently away.

  ‘I have a friend called Harriet Fitzpatrick who describes her marriage as lawful slavery,’ I told her, ‘but I do believe it can be different with the right man.’

  Hesketh entered and announced the once-right man. ‘Inspector Pound, miss.’

  I wondered if it were possible that Pound had heard my views, but I tho
ught it unlikely through the solid door.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Mortlock, Miss Middleton.’ His voice was flattened with weariness. ‘We have removed the body, though obviously the room is still in a… mess.’ His troubled blue eyes settled on me. ‘I shall need to speak to you both soon, but I do not suppose there is much you can tell me that I have not heard from Mr Grice already.’ Was there something of the old way in how he looked at me? ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I am in the middle of another murder investigation and I must get back to that.’

  His gaze broke away.

  ‘I suppose it is more important than this case,’ Cherry challenged him. ‘What is it – a member of the royal family?’

  ‘A street child,’ the inspector told her calmly, ‘and I cannot bring myself to tell you how he met his end.’

  ‘Was he a local boy?’ I asked.

  ‘You might have come across him on Gower Street.’ George Pound’s face disguised his feelings quite well but his voice could not. ‘Lively chap, went by the name of Nippy.’

  ‘You missed this one, Nippy.’ I pretended to stoop.

  ‘Oh please, God rest his little soul.’ I crossed myself.

  ‘I fink I prob’ly missed sixpence,’ Nippy said cheekily.

  ‘Amen to that.’ The inspector bowed and walked smartly away.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Cherry called after him. ‘I did not think.’

  ‘No,’ he replied as he went into the hall. ‘Nobody ever does.’

  We sat again.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ Cherry asked tentatively.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied, the boy’s face jumping up at me. ‘Nippy used to sift through the gutters for dropped coins, but he had a charm about him and some wit. Had he been born to better-off parents he might have gone far.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Sidney Grice appeared, even more dishevelled than before. ‘An urchin is an urchin. They are not like us.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I railed and wished I could storm off to my room to drink and smoke and cry my heart out.