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

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  SERGEANT HORWICH WAS decorated with a black eye and had a split in his upper lip.

  ‘Her two sons had a go at me,’ he chatted merrily, ‘but they went down like skittles. Then she came back with an uppercut – hence the shiner – but my straight right was the undoing of her. How’s Mr Grice?’

  ‘He has a bad fever but I think he will pull through.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ His face fell. ‘I’m supposed to be booking you for murder.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Just between ourselves – you didn’t do it, did you?’

  ‘No,’ I promised. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘That’s good enough for me.’ He winked and tapped the side of his purpled nose.

  ‘But not quite good enough for me.’ Inspector Quigley materialized at my shoulder, as unsavoury as ever, a frowsy man with dry eyes and a staleness about his person. ‘Good evening, Miss Muddleton.’

  ‘Middleton.’

  He sniffed. ‘Wonder why I always get that wrong.’

  ‘It could be because you are stupid,’ I told him and Horwich guffawed.

  Quigley rounded on him furiously. ‘When you have stopped giggling like a silly schoolgirl perhaps you could book this prisoner in.’

  The mirth fled the sergeant’s mouth in an instant. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And find her a cell for the night.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The inspector turned to me. ‘We will talk about this in the morning.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it,’ I assured him.

  ‘Sleep well,’ Quigley called as he made his way to the exit. ‘I know I shall.’

  ‘That wasn’t very clever of me, was it?’ I commented as Horwich filled out my details.

  ‘He’s a good copper, the inspector is.’ The desk sergeant blotted his book. ‘He usually gets his man.’

  ‘The only trouble is,’ I retorted, ‘he does not always get the right one.’

  ‘A conviction is a conviction.’ Horwich shrugged. ‘It’s what the public want, so it’s what the powers that be want and it’s what they get.’ He banged on a bell and shouted out, ‘Harris, take this lady down. Cell three.’ He picked at his moustaches. ‘Busy night, tonight, Miss Middleton. You’ll be sharing.’

  ‘Not with your bald sparring partner, I hope,’ I said.

  Horwich’s eyes crinkled. ‘Would I do that to you?’

  I had never been to the cells before. They were down a flight of stone steps and halfway Harris stopped.

  ‘You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Quigley,’ he warned very quietly. ‘’E’s a vicious so-and-so when ’e’s roused.’

  ‘I will use all my feminine charms,’ I promised.

  ‘That’s a goodun.’ Harris chortled good-naturedly. ‘You ain’t got none, ’ave you?’

  We passed through a heavy oak door to a bare passageway with eight doors to either side, each with barred windows and hinged wooden flaps below to close them off if necessary.

  Harris paused again and whispered, ‘I ’ope Mr Grice will be all right. ’E ’elped me out once, but ’e made me promise not to say.’

  ‘Will you let me know if you hear anything?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ His voice rose for the audience of faces appearing in the grills. ‘Saved you the one with a sea view.’ He put a key in the lock.

  ‘T’ain’t fair,’ an old man called from the cell opposite. ‘I’ve only got a field of sheep to look at.’

  ‘Yeah, but you got the four-poster bed,’ Harris joked as he steered me in.

  The cell was unlit except for the gaslight coming in from the passageway.

  ‘Bloody ’eck,’ a woman screeched. ‘You’ve given me the piggin’ murderess.’

  ‘Murderess,’ she hissed, the woman in the mirror.

  I leaped away and tried to calm myself, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim rays I saw it was the woman with whom I had travelled there.

  ‘They have taken my knife away from me,’ I reassured her.

  ‘Don’t come any closer.’

  She was sitting on the bed, crouched back in the corner, in a manner horribly reminiscent of Uncle Tolly when I had thought I’d killed him. I stood back.

  ‘If you had never travelled as far as Parbold,’ I wondered, ‘how did you happen to go to London?’

  ‘In a box,’ she told me. ‘Our dad packed me up in a crate and put me on a waggon that was going that way. ’E paid the wagoner three shillin’ and ’e told me I could mek my fortune in London and go back in the same box when I ’ad.’

  ‘And did you?’ I asked.

  The cell stank of human waste.

  ‘Did I ’eckers.’ She relaxed her arms, which had been raised to protect her from my anticipated assault. ‘I lived in that box for two days and when I gor out to ’unt for grub they broke it all up for firewood. Then I got done for vagrancy, then for comforting gentlemen, then a bit of thievin’ and stuff and ’ere I am twenty year on.’

  ‘Will you go home again?’

  She huffed. ‘What for? I’m more comfortable ’ere than I was there.’ She stuck her legs out straight over the edge of the bed. ‘So why d’you kill ’er?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘No, that won’t do at all.’ My cellmate rattled in mirth. ‘The beaks ’ate it when you deny stuff. I’ve got off much lighter for admitting things what I never done. They just want a reason and then summut to feel sorry for you about. Tell them you were trying to feed your baby after your husband died for ’is country. They like that one.’

  ‘I have not got a baby.’ I sat on the end on the bed.

  ‘Mek one up,’ she urged. ‘Or, better still, borrow one. Meg Turnaway is out the back most days and she’ll lend you ’ers fer a shillin’. Cry a lot as well, but not loud – they don’t like noisy criers, just tears rollin’ down your cheeks, dignified like. Susie Veronica will lend you an onion in an ’andkerchief fer tuppence, though she might charge you more, being a toff.’

  ‘I am not going to admit to a murder I did not commit,’ I insisted and she wheezed in amusement.

  ‘’Ow many times ’ave I ’eard that?’ she gurgled. ‘’Ow many times? But they soon change their tune when they’re up in that box – ’cept fer little Queeny Dale. She stuck to ’er guns and she’s doing life now.’

  ‘But I am innocent,’ I protested.

  She snorted and spat on the wall, and I could just make out something gelatinous sliding down like a small slug.

  ‘If you know what’s good fer you, you’ll cooperate.’

  ‘I have rarely known what’s good for me.’

  ‘Thought so. Which end?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The cot.’

  I lay with her feet in my face. It was either that or the dripping wall. You cannot lie on your back in a bustle.

  I was cold and thirsty and aching on the thin mattress, and my cellmate was snoring while the bald woman was hollering, ‘You there, is it too much to ask for tea and a few cucumber sandwiches?’ And somebody else was whistling ‘Lilly Bolero’, and the picture flicked through my head – a man on one knee, his sabre in the dust, the band playing and the diamond dull in the midday sun.

  It was the first time since you died that I had not untied the red ribbon to read your letters; nor touched our engagement ring. I said my prayers silently for you and myself and my guardian, and recited your third letter to myself, the one about the picnic. The letters and the prayers were intermingled so much now that I could scarcely tell them apart, and I could only hope the words were going to the same place. I felt George Pound’s ring press into me beneath my dress. Do you know I have it? Do you hate me for it? I am not even sure what it means.

  64

  Imaginary Horses and Grown-up Writing

  CONSTABLE NETTLES CAME for me in the morning. I do not think I slept but sleep is a great deceiver and, though the night seemed endless, I could remember little of it.

  ‘Don’t forget.’ My cellmate yawned, her mouth cobwebbed. ‘Susie Veronica
and Meg Turnaway. They’ll see you right.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ Nettles said. ‘One’s inside, the other’s in a box. Don’t ask me which.’

  My cellmate picked something off her neck and glared as if I had given it to her.

  ‘Good luck,’ I wished her as Nettles locked her in and led me out through the thick oak door.

  ‘Have you heard anything about Mr Grice?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ He plodded up the stairs. ‘Sorry.’

  We went back through the reception area which was almost empty now. A new sergeant sat at the desk and two small boys galloped their imaginary horses, shooting invisible guns at him.

  ‘Stand and deliver,’ one squeaked fiercely.

  ‘Number three,’ the sergeant told my guard, and we went down the long echoing corridor to the end on the left.

  I knew that interview room, with its wooden table under the tall grilled window, and I sat in the same place that William Ashby had occupied when Sidney Grice and I had questioned him about the murder of his wife, some eight months ago.

  Nettles stood behind me. ‘Stand up.’ The door opened and I half rose, until I saw who the newcomer was and sat back again.

  ‘I am not like Inspector Pound.’ Quigley strode in, waving a brown cardboard file. ‘I am not your friend.’

  I sighed. ‘You certainly know how to hurt a girl.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, I do.’ Quigley whipped a chair out. ‘I have an interesting witness statement here. Can you guess who I took it from?’

  ‘Mrs Prendergast’s maid,’ I said and he rested his foot on the chair.

  ‘Gloria Shell.’ He put his elbow on his knee. ‘Pretty little thing, don’t you think?’

  ‘I had not noticed,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh, I did straight away.’ He had missed a bit shaving under his nose. ‘I have to in my job.’ Those half dozen bristles repelled me. ‘Makes all the difference in a trial. Put some eel-faced hag in the box and she could quote the Bible and not be believed. A lovely little thing like that, though, and twelve men good and true will be hanging on every word.’ He leaned over towards me. ‘Don’t mess me about, Middleton. I’ve had a long night getting the truth out of some Irish bastards and if I don’t go to bed soon with a nice warm signed confession I will get very irritable indeed. And I am not nice when I am irritable, am I, Constable?’

  ‘Not nice at all,’ Nettles agreed fervently and the inspector slammed the file on to the desk.

  ‘I know you did it.’ His fingerplates had been gnawed savagely back. ‘Gloria Shell all but saw you do it and you went for her with the knife too. We have three people witnessed you attacking the victim’s dog. Now that last part might seem trivial to you, but if we exhibit that cute little cur and tell the jury how you battered it, they won’t even need to hear pretty Miss Shell before they’ve convicted you in their heads.’ He opened the folder. ‘My colleague here knows you did it and he’s very good in court, aren’t you, Constable?’

  ‘Not bad, sir, but—’

  ‘Now,’ Quigley brought out two handwritten documents, ‘that’s enough pleasantness. I have a confession here – yours – and, just to save time, I have had it written it out already from what you told me last night. Admit to the murder and we’ll drop the dog charges.’

  ‘That sounds fair,’ I said. ‘Where do I sign?’

  The inspector eyed me suspiciously. ‘It has already been witnessed.’ He jabbed the end of the document with his finger.

  ‘Got a pen?’ I asked. ‘You must realize I shall deny it all later.’

  ‘Deny all you like,’ Quigley sneered. ‘But me and three officers of the law heard you make it.’

  I took the fountain pen from him – the nib was splayed but it still worked – and wrote in block capitals. QUI. ‘I don’t suppose you can do joined-up writing.’

  Nettles tried to stifle a snort.

  ‘What the—’ Quigley slapped my hand, splattering ink over the table. ‘Take a tea break, Constable.’

  Nettles hesitated and his superior kicked back, sending the chair crashing to the floor.

  ‘Sir, I—’ Nettles began.

  ‘Just do it,’ Quigley screamed, a vein engorged on his left temple.

  Nettles walked reluctantly to the door and I saw the fear in his eyes as he looked back before he quit the room.

  65

  Prize Fighters and Custody

  NO SOONER HAD Nettles gone than Quigley was round the table and standing over me.

  I looked fixedly ahead. ‘If you harm me you will have Mr Grice and Inspector Pound to answer to.’

  Quigley brought his temper under control and was all the more frightening for that. ‘Two dying men,’ he said scornfully. ‘If they ain’t dead already.’

  ‘Aren’t,’ I corrected him. ‘Your accent is slipping, Inspector.’

  ‘Think yours will save you now,’ he sneered. ‘I’ve had women of your sort all hoity-toity and superior, but they’re begging me to give them favours before I’ve finished.’

  ‘The only favour you could do me is to book yourself into an undertakers,’ I vowed.

  Quigley grabbed my hair. My hair may be mousey but it is strong and I made no sound as he twisted me round, and his words sprayed into my face. ‘Always high and mighty, and thinking you’re so clever with your quips. Know what the men call you behind your back?’

  ‘I doubt they compare my breath to horse droppings,’ I retorted.

  Quigley wrenched at me. ‘Neither of us will leave this room until I get your signature on that confession.’

  ‘Read it to me,’ I suggested. ‘We can while the hours away with a little fiction.’

  ‘You did it, bitch.’

  He ripped so hard this time that I cried out.

  ‘No.’ I fumbled for the pen and grasped it like a dagger.

  Quigley cackled. ‘Do it. Assault a police officer and try to talk your way out of that one.’

  ‘You would not press charges,’ I challenged. ‘The great Inspector Quigley hurt by a little girl? They would laugh you out of the station.’

  I jabbed. I meant to get the side of his head but he jerked back and away, and I got him under the chin. The nib sank in and, when I let go, the pen dangled like a bizarre goatee.

  ‘Bloody bog bitch.’ He ripped it out and hurled it on the floor and his hand went back. ‘I’ll beat you black and blue for that.’

  ‘If you make one mark on me—’

  ‘Good morning, Inspector Quigley.’ Inspector Pound stood in the doorway.

  Quigley wheeled round. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Pound was grey and sunken under the cheekbones. ‘My turn to escort prisoners to the magistrates’ court.’

  ‘But you’re off sick.’

  ‘Well, I’m back on now.’ Pound was stooped like an old man. ‘This one needs remanding, I believe.’

  The two men watched each other like prizefighters squaring up for a match, but I would not have given Pound much of a hope in his condition if it had come to that.

  ‘I haven’t finished questioning her.’

  ‘I think you have,’ Pound assured him, adding urbanely, ‘and if there are any more questions I shall deal with it. This woman is already helping me with a related inquiry, which makes her my prisoner. We can discuss it with the superintendent if you like.’

  ‘She’s a murderess,’ Quigley insisted.

  ‘Which is why I am going to take her to court and have her properly arraigned.’ Pound took a few shallow breaths. ‘Otherwise she’ll have her lawyer slapping writs of habeas corpus.’

  ‘I’ve got forty-eight hours.’

  ‘And the courts will be closed until Monday,’ Pound reminded him.

  Quigley scooped his papers back into the file. ‘If you let her escape…’ he warned.

  ‘I have never lost a prisoner yet.’ Pound tried to straighten his back.

  ‘Nor me,’ Quigley rejoined.

  Nettles came in. He eyed Inspector Quigley
warily and me with some concern.

  ‘Except for a few who have died in custody,’ Pound recalled.

  ‘And all from natural causes.’ Quigley sneered. ‘Don’t lose her, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh, I intend to keep a very close eye on this one,’ Pound promised and Quigley brushed past, catching Pound’s stomach with his elbow.

  ‘Oh, I dooo beg your pardon,’ he said, presumably trying to mimic my accent but sounding vaguely Scottish.

  Pound gasped. He stayed on his feet, but he could not hide the pain jolting through him and the blood draining from his face. I rose to run towards him but he held out an arm.

  ‘March Lillian Constance Middleton.’ A dark stain appeared on his waistcoat over where I knew his stab wound to be. ‘I am arresting you on a charge of wilful murder and,’ his face screwed up, ‘I must ask you to accompany me…’ He waved a hand weakly. ‘You know the rest. Take her away, Constable.’

  ‘I thought you had come to help me,’ I said.

  Inspector Pound leaned against the wall. ‘I have come to do my duty,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Duty to whom?’ I cried, but he closed his eyes as the constable conducted me out.

  66

  The Toad and the Righteous Dust

  THE MAGISTRATES’ COURT was a nondescript public building from the back, the stonework charcoaled by existing in the atmosphere we all breathed. Eight of us were herded out on to the street, though my recent cellmate was not amongst our number.

  A small crowd of onlookers stood by.

  ‘Jezebel.’ A man in clerical garb waved a pamphlet in my face.

  ‘And Ocabah strode in righteous dust along the path of Bababath,’ I invented cryptically as I passed him by.

  ‘Ten quid says you were with me at the time,’ a shrivelled man in a crushed top hat whispered.

  ‘Twenty says I was not,’ I told him. Even a woman facing the gallows has her standards.

  We were herded into a high-ceilinged anteroom with small square barred windows and made to sit on long benches, the wood worn down by countless previous occupants. I could not imagine how much misery had waited there to have more misery heaped upon it.