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

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  I: First I am not, never have been, nor ever shall be a bloke. Second, no, but if you would be so kind as to inform Mr Kindred – who, as I trust you are aware, is the governor of this penal property – that there is a green dog lurking in Pyramid Street, I would be obliged, though not so obliged as to reward you with anything more than a curt nod.

  I made him repeat the sentence twice to be sure he had it right and waited for six and a half minutes, amusing myself by calculating the best way of murdering passers-by. I was just toying with the idea of dissolving an off-duty piano tuner when a door inset into the great door opened.

  Herriot: Mr Kindred says you are to come in. [Grief took my satchel, cane and the spring knife from my pocket. Did he really imagine that removing weapons would protect his governor should I have homicidal intent?] Have a care, Mr Grice. There’s a few what is only ’ere ’cause of you and some of them would be only too ’appy to thank you in person.

  I: I cannot share your conviction that they will thank me for theirs.

  [This was rather droll, I thought, involving the kind of play upon words that the lower orders find stimulating, but Grief managed to keep a straight face so I decided not to trouble to give him a curt nod after all.]

  Kindred was an imposing figure, six foot and three inches tall, and had boxed for his school and university – though not very well, as his visage bore witness.

  He greeted me thus: Grice. [We did not shake hands but tapped the toes of our right boots twice.] Is the dog hungry for a wasp?

  I: [wearily, for there were no secrets worth keeping in the society] A segmented worm. [Then I sat to face him across his desk.] You have lost three and a half pounds since I saw you last. [This last remark was not a code but a pleasantry, which is something ordinary people enjoy.]

  Kindred: More like seven.

  I: Three and a half. Your wife adjusts the scales to encourage you to persist with your dietary regime. Have a care, Governor Kindred, for a spouse who deceives from love may one day do so from different motives as twelve per centum of your residents could, but probably shall not, testify.

  [Grief left us, unmourned.]

  Kindred: You know, of course, that the green dog code is only to be used in extremis and can only be applied once, so that you may never ask a favour of me again, whereas I may ask you two?

  I: I formulated the rules.

  He: I can guess whom this is about.

  I: Let me save you the trouble. My ward is to stand trial for her life. I must see her and we shall be alone.

  He: Alone? [Kindred cracked his knuckles twice.] Green dog or not, that would be most irregular. I could be disciplined if anything happened.

  [I ran my finger over the perimeter of an ink stain on the desktop and hummed nine notes.]

  I: If you cooperate I shall stand down as president of the Rigby Club and nominate you as my successor.

  [The Rigby Club (which celebrates capital punishment in all its glory) was, of course, named after Elaine Rigby, who kept her mother’s face in a bottle. I reversed direction and retraced the pattern, making sure that I finished at exactly the same point.]

  He: President. [Kindred’s battered features luminanced.] So I would get to sit on the scaffold chair. [He sat taller, no doubt imagining the prospect.]

  I: Yes.

  He: And wear the broken dagger?

  I: Indeed.

  He: And carry the ceremonial noose?

  I: Yes, and silently pronounce the sentence of death at midnight.

  Kindred’s hands made as if to accept the scrolls of office and then he said: Very well. You may see her for ten minutes.

  I: Fifteen, and I shall let you use the great seal which rightfully belongs to me.

  He: Very well. [Kindred rose like a lotus-eater in one of those dreadful poems with which Miss Middleton likes to torture me.] I shall accompany you myself.

  And so we set off along five corridors, through four doors which all had to be unlocked and relocked with great clamour. Kindred walked slowly for a man with such extravagantly elongated limbs and I was able to calculate that the woman in cell 314 was manifestly innocent but, since she was not my client, this was only of academic interest to me. A gentleman does not tout for business.

  Kindred stopped at last and said: Here we are.

  I: If you analyse that remark you will see how pointless it is. I suspect you meant to tell me that we had arrived at the door of Miss Middleton’s cell.

  Kindred’s masseter muscles bunched, demonstrating he had reached the fourth degree of annoyance. He indicated abruptly to the perfumed warder who was patrolling the area that the same official should open the door.

  80

  Late Wednesday Morning

  MISS MIDDLETON WAS not at all as I expected, though I should have learned from my experiences with what became known as the Beast of Buckingham Palace never to expect anything except a peerage.

  My ward was seated on the bed, backed into the corner with her feet pulled up. She was clutching her knees and exhibiting, it disgusts me to relate, some three and a half inches of her left shin and fractionally under five of her right. Her hair, ever reminiscent in its coarseness of a dray horse’s tail, was draped about her face so that she might have appeared to be looking at me through a shredded and dirty piece of sacking, except that she was not looking at me at all but taking a keen interest in her left hand with the digits rubbing repeatedly over each other in a manner similar to that of my mother constructing a cigarette. The door closed.

  I: Good morning, March. Your presentation is worse than it was when you first arrived in London.

  [Miss Middleton’s hand stilled.]

  I: I trust you are not being petulant because I have not visited you sooner. [Her hand formed an approximation of a claw.] I have been, as you are aware, indisposed and kept in ignorance of your plight, but you will be delighted to learn that I am greatly recovered.

  [The hand rotated one hundred and seventy degrees in each direction seventeen times, as though rattling a white china handle on a satinwood door.]

  I: We have limited time and I have had to promise to abdicate my presidency of the Rigby Club in order to gain any at all. [The fingers closed and the right hand enveloped it.] I have given up my chair made from the very gallows on which James Bloomfield Rush was hanged on 21 April 1849, at Norwich Castle.

  [Averting my gaze, I heaved at the hem of her dress and managed to pull it down some two inches, but my ward had a tight grip on it now and I did not intend to wrestle with her.]

  I: Also one of the knives used by Frederick Baker.

  But it was obvious that she was not going to engage in the conversation and I began to wonder if I could trim my visit to five minutes and three-quarters, and at least retain my personal seal. I parted her hair, which I was distressed to find enriched with the exudate of sebaceous glands, and her eyes rose very slowly, rather as one’s father might had he been prematurely buried in a shallow muddy grave. Her pupils, I noted, were greatly constricted, though the light in her cell was poor, and the sclera had taken on a green discolouration reminiscent of the last occasion when they had done so.

  I calculated the rate of her pulse, which averaged a slow three thousand, three hundred and sixty percussions per hour. Her skin was cold and, I am embarrassed to relate, clammy. I flicked her eyelids and they rose at approximately the same rate as my green flag when one is a trifle lethargic. I pinched her ear lobes. Most people do not care to have their ear lobes nipped, but Miss Middleton did not seem to mind.

  I: What have you been eating?

  [I did not know if she would reply, but I thought it unlikely. Miss Middleton chewed ruminatively at the side of her tongue without closing her mouth. Her gingival margins had also taken on a verdant hue. I examined the beds of her fingerplates, which were a striking emerald colour.]

  She: Pig.

  Admittedly, it was one more word than I extracted from the Marquess of Milton Keynes when we shared a lifeboat, but hardly wo
rth surrender of the rope which strangled Elizabeth Pearson.

  Not having been convicted of any crime yet, Miss Middleton had been allowed to keep her own attire. I could not view the soles of her boots (always a treasure trove of information, especially in The Case of the Four Prince Alberts, in which I played a minor role) without the risk of uncovering her lower limbs, and so I contented myself with examining her cloak which lay crumpled on the bed, used, I imagine, as an extra cover, for gaol blankets are not to be recommended for their insulating properties as I can vouch from my incarceration in Her Majesty’s Prison Dartmoor.

  The cloak had some bloodstains inside, which were consistent with it having been donned after the death of Mrs Prendergast. There were also two minor burns from lighted cigarettes; a slight stretch in the lining of one pocket, most probably from an ill-concealed bottle of gin; and a clue.

  81

  Wednesday Noon

  GOVERNOR KINDRED WAS lounging in the corridor, filling a poorly seasoned briar pipe and trying to pretend that he had not been watching me through the spyhole.

  I: How long has she been approximating a stupor?

  [He had freckles around his nostrils, about which Miss Middleton would have made some playful remark in happier times.]

  He: I could not say, for she was in that state when she arrived.

  [He tamped his shag down with an oranged first finger.]

  I: Has she been attended by a doctor?

  He rubbed the head of a Lucifer on the abrasive strip to ignite the former and informed me, though he must have realized that I knew: This is not a hospital. Besides, I think she is pretending.

  [He sucked the flame down over the bowl, shook the Lucifer out and tossed it on the sandstone floor.]

  I: Do you have a pipe knife?

  He: Of course.

  [He inhaled the combustion products with apparent enjoyment.]

  I: Then go into Miss Middleton’s cell and insert the blade under one of her fingerplates and observe whether or not she reacts. Then try the same upon yourself and see if you can remain similarly unresponsive.

  Kindred blew smoke in my face, though not intentionally, I believe, and said: We have a lot of hysterical women here.

  A prisoner was being taken away. She glanced back and I saw that it was Marigold Pride, the Looms Lane Lisper.

  She: Mithter Grithe. [The prisoner tried to surprise me but the warders had a tight grasp on her arms.] It’th you. [And she hithed in an almost feline manner as she struggled to break free.]

  Miss Middleton would, no doubt, have had some witty retort ready, but I could only respond: I am fully aware of that, thank you, Mrs Pride.

  She: Let me go. I’ll kill ’im. It’th ’im what put me inthide.

  I could have debated, as they dragged her away, that it was only my revelation of her actions that led to her conviction, but she did not seem anxious to enter into a reasoned discussion so I remarked sympathetically: Try to be grateful, Mrs Pride. Thanks to my investigations you will not have to worry about having a roof over your head until you are ninety-six.

  Kindred: [addressing me and not the prisoner] I will show you out.

  [Kindred struggled to relight his pipe and trod on a crack. He was never any good at anything.]

  *

  On the way home I stopped at the aptly though unimaginatively named ‘Pet Shop’ on Warren Street. There was a tiger cub offered for purchase under the alias of Tomass and an anonymous American alligator being promoted as an Affrikun Crockadile. Several puppies gazed at me pleadingly but unappealingly and an African Grey Parrot wondered inappropriately which of us was a pretty boy. I did not trouble to respond that neither of us were boys (though I fitted the description a little more closely than she), but I could not help recalling the case of Midshipman Alan Wilkins, whose pet bird called out Oh George yes so suggestively that he struck his wife down with a barometer. With her dying breath, she explained she had been teaching it to say Hello, Gorgeous whenever she entered their front parlour. Yet another example of the havoc created by poor articulation and the vanity of women.

  I purchased a mouse. The owner, evidently a retired bagpipe repairer, assured me this was a rare specimen and very loyal.

  I: It is mus musculus, the common house mouse and, if I were seeking affection, which I am not, I should not be turning to a verminous rodent.

  He: If you want it for snake food I can let you ’ave them by the dozen at a good price.

  I had considered getting a python as I had found one quite useful in the past, but I declined and was mortified to discover that, although the animal was only one penny, the cage which I required to convey it cost eighteen times more.

  *

  I regained admittance to my house.

  Molly: Oh, sir, is that a friend for Mr Wispy?

  I: Mr Wispy being whom?

  She: Being whom what, sir?

  [I placed my cane in the rack. This was not a job I entrusted to Molly since she had once positioned a stick out of line with its fellows.]

  I: Who or what is Mr Wispy? And do not require me to repeat that name again.

  Molly clasped her hands together and said: Oh, sir, Mr Wispy is the mouse what lives in the pantry. [She put her red-chaffed fists over where she imagined her heart to be.] Oh, he is so sweet and brown.

  I: [handing her my cloak] I shall introduce it to Miss Middleton’s cat.

  Molly smirked: Oh, Spirit has already metted him, sir. They snuggle up by the oven.

  [I resolved to set some traps but was not in a frame of mind that equipped me to listen to her protests.]

  I: Listen very carefully, Molly. Under no circumstances must you feed this mouse.

  Molly pulled at a pendulous tress and asked: Under nose what, sir?

  [I have heard Miss Middleton describe me as patience personified and though I suspect she was attempting to be ironic, I know it to be the case, but even I was getting a little vexed.]

  I said slowly and firmly: Do not feed this mouse. If you do, Miss Middleton may die and it will be your fault.

  Molly wrapped the tress around her hand: Are you getting it thin so it can crawl along a drainpipe with a key round its neck to help Miss Middleton escape? Oh, what a clever idea, sir. I told Cook you wouldn’t not just let her be killed like you do all your customers.

  I finally became patience un-personified and shouted: How dare you! They were clients not customers. Get back to work.

  She: [sotto voce, as she lumbered off] Still dead, though.

  *

  I called in on Dr Crystal. He is one of the six men whose knowledge of biochemistry I respect, though not a great deal, and none can rival his knowledge of equine mud fever, but he lacks my sensitivity in dealing with humans.

  He: Threw all that stuff down the sink.

  I: Which might explain some of those reports of rats dying in the sewers.

  He was boiling a flask of horse manure in sodium hydroxide and said: If I can turn this back into hay my fortune is assured.

  [There was a member of the Atelidae family, a woolly monkey, gibbering in a tiny cage and I felt a little sorry for it, having only Dr Crystal for company.]

  I: Can you make some more antidote?

  [His laboratory was so untidy it made me itch on the points of my elbows.]

  He: I probably could [he stirred his concoction with a tarnished silver soup spoon], given a month or two, but I feel it only fair to tell you that every dog, cat, ape, monkey, alligator or donkey to which I gave a second dose had a fatal seizure on the spot.

  I left him to his ridiculous experiment, not troubling to tell him that I was having better success with my own.

  82

  Wednesday Evening

  MR O’BRIAN ARRIVED at four minutes past six, puffing with the effort of shuffling so much adipose tissue the distance of a disputed number of expectorations.

  He: [in response to my hospitable offer] Do you have nothing containing ethanol?

  I told him I had some
brandy which I reserved for clients who feel faint and he assured me that he felt liable to swoon at any moment, so I fetched the tray from the sideboard and he poured himself a measure at which even Miss Middleton might have baulked.

  I had borrowed a mannequin from Miss Daisy’s Boutique with the promise (following their frightening experiences with Mrs Juno Amplecyse) not to recommend them to any more clients. Molly had put my ward’s dress on it and, as the surgeon and I stood surveying it, I outlined my conclusions.

  He paced round the model and said: I can add nothing to that. [He toddled back to his Courvoisier.] Miss Middleton told me some lies when I met her but with the object of saving that fellow Pound’s life. I did not have her down as a cold-blooded killer.