Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series)

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  I dropped the key and watched it drift down side to side like a lost coin in a lake. It seemed so far away when I leaned to retrieve it and the lock was spongy as I twisted it back, and he was still there, Uncle Tolly, slumped in the corner, his hand on the sill grasping the curtain, unmoved, not a glimmer of life about him. I stood a long time watching from the sloping threshold but there was nothing, not even the hope. I slammed the door, secured it, and slipped the key into my dress pocket where it clinked against my lucky sixpence.

  ‘My lucky, lucky sixpence,’ I whispered as I crept away.

  The stairs were steep and stretched forever down to hell. I put a foot on the first step. It gave a little beneath me so I adjusted my weight and took the bannister rail, twisting and scaly as a snake writhing between my fingers, but I grasped it hard and tamed it.

  ‘See how it dances to the charmer’s flute,’ my father said. The flute had a swelling near the mouthpiece mimicking the hood of the cobra rising and swaying with the music.

  Everything undulating, I made my way down tentatively, trying to recall going up. Was it really only last night? I remembered stumbling halfway up and Uncle Tolly taking my arm, and I stumbled again now, toppling helpless on to the storm-tossed deck as we sailed round the Horn on our way to India.

  I clung to the post until the dizziness subsided and looked around the hall – the same square with the pink-veined floor and pillars and white-plastered walls. I went round the leering Saturn and checked the doors. They were all locked except the double walnut door into the study. I entered and glanced at the charts spread over the map table and the fire gone to ashes in the grate.

  Was that another cry?

  I went back into the hall and called out Hello, but only the reverberations of my voice answered me. So many echoes.

  ‘How ghastly,’ Uncle Tolly said. ‘I wonder…’

  The ring of keys was still in the box. I took them down and tried two before I found the one that opened the dining-room door. Annie the maid was dusting the flame-shaped leaves on a flowerless aspidistra. She greeted me brightly. ‘Oh, miss, you’re an early riser. Mr Travers Smyth doesn’t usually breakfast until eleven o’clock. Would you like me to get you something?’

  Everything looked so normal, even the portrait of Great-Aunt Matilda rolling her eyes and huskily repeating every word: ‘…get you something?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ The secret door was open in the oak panelling behind her, not secret anymore. ‘Did you hear anything unusual last night, Annie?’

  ‘Unusual,’ said Great-Aunt Matilda.

  She lowered her duster. ‘Why, bless you, miss, I don’t hear nothing in the night. It’s all I can do to stop myself falling asleep before I get to bed. Mr Travers Smyth is a kind master but a domestic’s day is too long and too hard for a body to deal with, without listening for noises.’ She crinkled her forehead. ‘What sort of thing do you mean?’

  ‘Mean,’ said Great-Aunt Matilda.

  I pointed to the panelling. ‘Are there any other secret passageways in this house?’

  ‘Why no, miss.’ She pulled out a broken feather. ‘But Mr Travers Smyth will be able to tell you that for he designed and built this house himself, so I believe. Did—’

  I slammed the door and locked it.

  18

  The Frozen Bicyclist

  I HAD NO idea what to do next. Sidney Grice would have known. He would have been upstairs sniffing around Uncle Tolly’s body, probing wounds with his steel spatulas, inspecting the axe through his pince-nez, putting samples of hairs into his envelopes and blood clots into his test tubes, scrutinizing hand marks on the wallpaper, tapping about with his cane. I could not even face going up those stairs again.

  I paced to and fro, much steadier on my tingling feet now. I have never been afraid of a corpse. The soul has departed and the shell it has quit can no more do me harm than it can do me good. One might as well be frightened of a log. The human body deserves reverence for what it once contained, but it should not instil terror.

  And yet I was afraid. Was it because I could not face the consequences of my actions? Was I terrified by what I had done? What had I done? I had been half-aware of a tapping, but then it became four sharp knocks and a man’s voice called out, ‘Miss Middleton? Are you all right? Is Mr Travers Smyth there?’

  I opened the door again to see Colwyn in his shirt and waistcoat, but his jacket over his arm and his cravat hurriedly arranged.

  Great-Aunt Matilda glared at his back.

  ‘Fetch the police,’ I said. ‘Something has happened.’

  His face was all concern. ‘To my master?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He automatically straightened his cuffs. ‘Can I be of assistance to him?’

  ‘He is beyond assistance,’ I replied, and found that I could not meet his eye. ‘I am sorry, but he has been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’

  ‘Murdered,’ Great-Aunt Matilda suspired.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I told her. ‘Yes.’

  Colwyn looked perplexedly about him, then to Annie, who had dropped her duster. ‘Fetch the police.’ She hesitated. ‘Hurry, girl.’ And Annie ran through the secret door and disappeared, her boots clattering and quickly fading down the wooden steps. He turned back to me. ‘But how, miss? What’s happened?’

  I felt hot and nauseous. ‘I cannot say.’

  Colwyn shook out his jacket and slipped his arms through the sleeves. ‘I must go to my master.’

  ‘No.’ I held his gaze this time. ‘You must wait for the police. I have locked the door.’

  ‘Then I must ask you for the key, miss.’

  ‘The body must not be disturbed,’ I demurred, wondering how I knew such a thing.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ I was feeling dizzy again. ‘But I think I might have killed him.’

  Colwyn took a step forward ready to catch me, his eyes wide with consternation.

  ‘Allow me to escort you to the study, miss.’ I did not want to play the swooning girl, but I felt so unsteady that I was obliged to take his arm and be guided back into the library and the armchair where I had sat the night before facing Uncle Tolly. ‘May I offer you a drink, miss… something to steady your nerves?’

  ‘Gin,’ I said, ‘if you have any.’

  Colwyn went to the sideboard and took the stopper out of a square decanter. ‘And tonic water?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I had had enough quinine in India not to regard its consumption as a pleasure.

  He brought me a large tumbler two thirds full and I took it from the tray. The glass felt woolly in my grip.

  ‘While we are waiting for the police, miss.’ He hovered by my shoulder, ‘Is there anything you can tell me about how Mr Travers Smyth was killed?’

  I took a drink. ‘Is there anything you can tell me? Did you hear or see anything unusual last night?’ I felt as if I were reciting the lines of a play. The curtain would close soon but no one would applaud.

  Colwyn lowered the tray. I glimpsed myself in it but could not remember how I got there.

  ‘Nothing until Annie told me you had locked her in.’ He hesitated. ‘I have followed your guardian’s career with some interest, miss, and I recall in the Adventure of the Frozen Bicyclist that he was able to bring the murderers to justice simply by getting all the witnesses to write their recollections of events and comparing the different versions. If I may venture to make a suggestion, it might help the police if you were to make a written record of what you know whilst the memory is still fresh in your mind.’

  I got to my feet and went to the desk, the long grass brushing my dress, a thousand blue swallowtail butterflies flitting around us as Edward struggled with the hamper behind me.

  There was plenty of paper, a box of goose quills and an almost empty bottle of ink. I dipped the pen and began, my words having the same odd tint of green as Uncle Tolly’s letter had shown to me when I lived in another world. I, Marc
h Middleton…

  Where to start? I made a few notes while Colwyn busied himself building the fire.

  ‘Not usually my job.’ He snapped a length of kindling. ‘But I suppose I do not have a job now.’

  ‘I am sure you will have no trouble finding another position,’ I said as he hung the tongs back on their stand.

  I continued:… of 125 Gower Street, London. But I could not write that I thought I might have murdered him.

  Colwyn glanced back at me, and for an instant I saw a little boy crouching as he struck a Lucifer, but I shook the image off as one dries an umbrella.

  ‘Boys love to light fires,’ I said, and he shot a glance at me as if I had said something very peculiar.

  I made a few notes about how Uncle Tolly had contacted me and how I had never heard of him but, even as I wrote, I knew that I was jumbling things up. Why was I writing about pigs?

  Colwyn had the fire going and was tidying up some books.

  ‘It would be better not to disturb anything.’ My voice came from very far away, from another room in another house.

  ‘Very well, miss.’

  The valet stood back as I crossed the room, folded the page and thrust it into the coals which were just starting to glow. The embers rose and floated prettily down and I remembered another letter I had committed to the flames when some of the world seemed sane.

  I am afraid for you, March.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Excuse me one moment, miss.’ He went into the hall and I heard the bolts drawing back but they seemed nothing to do with me.

  Sidney Grice will destroy you.

  Colwyn returned with a uniformed constable close behind.

  ‘That was quick,’ I commented.

  ‘What’s all this about then?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘This lady says that Mr Ptolemy Travers Smyth is dead,’ Colwyn announced in shocked tones, ‘and that she might have killed him.’

  Destroy you, she said.

  19

  Musical Mice

  THE CONSTABLE REGARDED me doubtfully. ‘Do you have anything to say, miss?’ His cape and helmet were wet.

  ‘He was my second cousin.’ I tried hard to get to the point. ‘And he has been murdered.’

  ‘How?’

  I supported myself on the desk. ‘With an axe.’

  ‘No!’ Colwyn breathed. His face blanched.

  ‘Did you do it?’ the constable asked.

  ‘I am not sure what happened.’

  The policeman took his helmet off and tucked it under his arm, the Brunswick star glowering like a Cyclops’ eye. ‘We had better take a look at the body then.’

  ‘You will need the key.’ I delved into my pocket and placed the hot metal in his hand, and the policeman huffed.

  ‘Is this an attempt to bribe me?’

  He held it under my nose and I saw that I had given him my lucky sixpence. I took it back and handed him the key.

  ‘Allow me to show you the way,’ Colwyn said.

  The constable shuffled his surprisingly dainty feet. ‘You won’t try to do a runner?’

  ‘I am not sure I can even walk.’

  ‘I don’t think Miss Middleton will try to get away,’ Colwyn vouched and the policeman brightened up.

  ‘Never caught a murderer before,’ he confessed modestly. ‘Could be a promotion in it for me.’

  ‘It is probably all a misunderstanding,’ Colwyn said.

  ‘The police should be here soon,’ I contributed before discovering that they had gone. I got up. The desk was tilted and slippery and the floor gave way, like soft sand beneath my feet, but I made it to the fireplace. The fire was burning well now and white mice scampered between the coals, singing a very high and haunting tune.

  Annie came into the room and viewed me warily as I tried to sing along.

  ‘I do not know the words,’ I confessed.

  The mice started glowing.

  Part of my notes fluttered on to the hearth, my name still visible on the carbonized page.

  One of the mice began to smoulder. It squeaked and burst into flames. I tried to pick it out, but the fire was too hot and pouring out thick yellow smoke. The other mice were starting to steam.

  ‘We must do something,’ I cried and pushed her aside to get the tongs, but the mice were all catching alight now and the smoke mushroomed, fused and floated towards me, and I knew that if I stayed any longer something terrible would happen.

  ‘Too late.’ I do not know which of us said that.

  I threw the tongs aside, for I knew now that these were not mice but tiny pink pigs and you cannot pick up pigs with tongs. Annie snatched up the poker and waved it nervously, standing well back.

  ‘The policeman said you might turn violent.’ She was trembling as she spoke. ‘Please don’t try anything on me, miss.’

  ‘I am not the one who is armed,’ I reasoned and she giggled uncertainly.

  It was then I realized that the pigs were only small because they were far away but they were growing now, which meant they were getting closer, a whole herd of wild hogs thundering along the tunnel that led into the fireplace.

  ‘I’ve heard that is how mad people try to get you off guard. I don’t suppose poor Mr Travers Smyth,’ Annie fought back the tears, ‘knew you were dangerous.’

  The room was filling with fumes and I could already hear the squeals and see those pink eyes blister, opaque with pain.

  I am afraid for you, March. You must leave that house.

  Their trotters crunched in the glowing embers as they hurtled along. The first pig leaped out, trotters skidding on the bricks as it scuttled past me, snorting and chomping its salivating jaws.

  ‘I have to get out of here.’

  ‘I am sorry, miss.’ Annie darted in front of me, the poker raised. ‘But I have been told to keep you here.’

  You must leave.

  An old sow was squealing, mouth agape, her yellow teeth bared, her tongue coated in green slime.

  ‘But they will kill us both.’

  Leave.

  I could even smell them now, the acid and the mustard and the excrement. I tried to step aside but a shrieking, slavering hog lunged at me, sabre tusks slashing, and I toppled into Annie but she stood her ground. Perhaps she was trying to fight the pigs off, but the poker passed through their bodies as it rained upon my head.

  20

  The Land of Angels

  IRAN. I STAGGERED into the hall, shielding my head, and snatched my cloak, sending the stand crashing over, forgetting that Colwyn had said that the door was locked, then recollecting where the keys were kept, fumbling with the ring. So many little keys and one big one.

  There was a rush and I thought the pigs were following, but it was only Annie. ‘Help, she’s getting away.’

  ‘That must be it.’ I slipped it into the hole, steadying my right hand with my left, the lock turning easily. ‘Yes.’ I slid back the bolts and flung the door open.

  Feet thundered on wood deep inside the house – animal or human, I did not wait to find out.

  I jumped down the two semicircular steps and along the drive, my boots sinking into the gravel, the ground rising black with white crests breaking around me, almost knocking me off my feet. I got to a vertical section of drive and scrambled up it, toppling over the edge and landing heavily on the other side. My palms stung and the pain helped me concentrate. I got to my feet and staggered on and heard a shout behind me. Stop. But it only spurred me on and I found that if I leaned forwards I could run much faster.

  I was on the pavement now and something rushed past – a rippling block of brown followed by a wall of grey with massive trundling spokes – a carriage going along the road to my left, and I was frightened of it so I went right. There were feet crunching on the loose stones far away, but they were getting louder and therefore closer and I knew that I could not outpace them. I went right again and left – I think – up another driveway towards a turreted brick house, except it had
an arch which seemed familiar and so I rushed through the massive open gateway and down a path with neatly trimmed high hedges, and then another narrower way which meandered between bushes where a dog crouched frozen and colourless at its master’s frozen and colourless feet. There was a crashing through the undergrowth and voices nearby, and the ground disappeared and I fell.

  I fell like Icarus, his waxen wings melted by the sun, like Alice down the rabbit hole, like…

  The ground reappeared and hit me very hard, knocking the wind out of me and making my teeth clack, and I lay trying to quieten my breathing, quite sure that my heart was booming loud enough for anyone to hear. There was a rustling close by. Somebody tripped and hissed, ‘Shit,’ but seemed to move off in another direction, and the following footsteps became fainter and a man called, ‘I can’t see her.’ And another replied, ‘Don’t worry. We know where she’s going.’ And I lay still, wondering how they could possibly know that when I had no idea myself.

  I waited a long time, face down, listening to the sounds dying. Where do sounds go when they die? My breathing and pulse slowed and quietened but still I did not get up. The earth was comforting. The smell and firmness of it made me feel secure. I half rolled and found that I was in a shallow trench with very straight edges. I crawled out on my knees towards two angels, white skin and hair and robes, wings folded and heads bowed towards each other, their faces steeped in sorrow.

  I stood up. There was a marble child nearby with the marble kitten in her arms going green. I walked round her and found myself in a long straight alley bordered by pebbled rectangles with upright granite slabs at the far ends and separated by well-tended lawns. A lady was kneeling, placing a holly wreath in front of a Celtic cross. She jumped in alarm.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I fell into a grave,’ I told her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Luckily, it was only half dug.’