Pound went back to scratching the dark spikes on his chin and said: But I understood that she has some valuable stock.
I surveyed the inspector closely. Was he feigning an interest in my goddaughter in the hope of acquiring her fortune and, possibly, even mine? But Pound was not a cynical man. He had spurned the advances of Cynthia Meadowgrass, who was worth at least six thousand a year and could have got him a promotion. So I decided to let that thought pass for the present. Normally I would not have dreamed of discussing money with a policeman, but there was nothing normal about my ward’s predicament.
I: Shortly after I met my obligation to Miss Middleton, her shares in a mining company soared in price. [I ignored his muttered Damn it and continued.] In fact I allowed her to believe that this was the reason I had taken her under my roof. She has, however, made a will in which all the value of these shares should be used to start and manage a school in India.
He: She has spoken to me of the great poverty she saw there.
I: There are times she speaks of little else.
He: So the only people to benefit financially from Miss Middleton’s execution would be some poor children across the world [his skin glistened with sweat and I wished it would stop doing so] – not exactly likely suspects.
I toyed with the jackal ring on my watch chain and recalled: I have captured a great many unlikely culprits in my time.
[I could not tell him that amongst those was a person given to violent attacks on prostitutes in the Whitechapel area who had only avoided arrest because of another’s intervention. I deposited my elbows on the back of the chair. The young man started whimpering, rarely a good sign in young men, but the matron was telling him to shush because she knew best.]
He: What about her uncle’s money?
[The inspector mopped his brow with a corner of his sheet.]
I: Assuming there is any, and I have yet to investigate that point [I pulled my lower right eyelid up over the eye], all who knew of Miss Middleton’s inheritance would also have known that she had bequeathed it to a similarly wasteful cause in the East End of London, whose inhabitants can hardly communicate in grunts let alone read.
[I sat down again and poured another tea and held it out to Pound.]
He put out his hand: Why, thank you.
I whisked it away: I merely wished you to see how poorly it keeps its temperature after the bottle has been opened.
Pound looked less pleased than he had a moment ago and said: Do you think Mr Travers Smyth’s death could have been accidental? [He went back to preening his pointless moustaches.] I believe the gun went off when Miss Middleton put it on a table.
I: It is unlikely to have been an accident in the sense that you mean. Until Miss Middleton fiddled – something she is always inclined to do – with the tension, the trigger was very stiff. But I am reserving my judgement until I have further information. [I drank my tea in three attempts.] I shall wish you a good night, Inspector George Henry Pound, for I have a busy day ahead of me. There are seven people I wish to see and four of them may still be alive.
There was a hush at the other end of the ward. I had heard that quietness many times in my extraordinary life and, as I passed, I saw that the young man, true to my prophesy, was suffering no more.
85
Thursday Morning, 25 January 1883
I WENT FIRST to the mortuary. In her emotional account of the Ashby case Miss Middleton referred to it as The House of Death and made it sound a cheerless place, but I have spend many a happy hour there, picking at human flesh in various stages of corruption.
Parker, the attendant, greeted me at the door with: I’m sorry, Mr Grice [he dried his filthy hands on his filthier laboratory coat], but I’m not allowed to show you that one.
Parker was forty-two years old but a casual observer might easily have added a quarter of a century to that figure. He was prematurely aged by the astonishing array of diseases that he had acquired from his charges. This was largely due to his stubborn and ill-informed refusal to believe in any theories of contagion. Today he was quite healthy – apart from a virulent infestation with ringworm on his thinly thatched pate and a chronic case of consumption or coffin cough as it is called in the undertaking trade.
I: Who has forbidden it?
He: Inspector Quigley says you mustn’t be allowed near her in case you tamper with evidence.
[He scratched his flaking scalp.]
I: If you let me see Mrs Prendergast I shall reward you handsomely. [I brought out my wallet.] And I am referring to paper money. [Parker twitched at this news and came up on his toes as if intending to balance it on his nose.] You can rely on me not to betray you.
He: I’m sorry, Mr Grice, but it’s more than my job’s worth.
I: But your job is worth very little, Parker. I probably remunerate my cook more than you are paid.
[Parker tried to push out his chest indignantly, but his ribcage was concave and the effect was not impressive.]
He: My job is worth a great deal. I get stood drinks every night of my life on account of the stories I can tell and gentry who think I will give them a tour, which I do not, on my life.
[I watched his sores suppurate and had an uncomfortable suspicion that Miss Middleton might have done better at talking Parker round. She was never much good at charm but perhaps she would have threatened him.]
I: What if I tell the authorities you have shown me around, unless you do?
He: So if I don’t… [It took Parker a little while to work it out.] Then you will… [He shook his head and a disconcerting variety of particles scattered on to my Ulster.] No, you wouldn’t do that, Mr Grice. You’re a gent.
[I knew there was no point in denying it and that was when I really missed my ward. Few people had any difficulty in believing that she would have behaved so disgracefully.]
I dusted down my coat, put my wallet away and asked: Have you seen the cadaver?
Parker dropped on to his heels and said sulkily: Seen, stripped and washed it. [He stopped. I clinked two coins together and he started again.] She’d been stabbed once in the chest.
I: I will not pay to be told what I already know.
[He grasped a little tuft of hair and pulled it quite easily away with the attached and discoloured skin.]
He: She had two corsets on.
I: And they are worth a shilling each.
I dropped the coins into his cupped palm, taking care not to touch him. Unlike Parker, I was all too aware of the animalcula lurking in his place of work. They are more dangerous than the French and almost as treacherous as the Spanish. He bit the coins. I have seen many people do that but never known anything to result from their investigations other than the occasional chipped tooth.
I: I presume the restriction of my examination of evidence also applies to the corpse of the reputedly delectable Miss Gloria Shell.
He: I’m sorry, Mr Grice. [Parker made a strenuous but only partially successful attempt to evacuate the phlegm from his bronchi into his hand and smeared the result on to his coat.] She ain’t very delicatable now, though.
I: Explain. [Seeing him hesitate, I rattled my small change.] I have other coins which, if they were capable of emotion, would be just as happy joining their fellows in your pocket as they are in mine.
[I have always found the lower orders difficult to communicate with, but I have never known them not to realize when they are being bribed.]
He: [with professional pride] All smashed in she is.
I: What do you mean by all? Are her feet crushed? What about her elbows?
He: Her face. There is more bone outside than in.
I: What a terrible pity. [I sighed.] I should very much like to have seen that. What about the back of her head?
[Parker chewed that thought, tapping the top of his encrusted dome over his parietal bone.]
Then he said: One big dent on top.
I: Describe how you think she was attacked.
Parker struck a pose and
began: She was standing with her back to the murderer. [He indicated with his slime-smeared hand towards the far wall.] He crept up behind her. [He re-enacted the movement in the exaggerated way that would-be actors do in melodramas, lifting his feet high and placing them in a manner more reminiscent of a cockerel than a man with homicidal intent.] He raised an iron bar and brought it crashing down on the back of her head. [Parker obliged with an unconvincing wheeling of his arm.] She fell lifeless to the ground [he arched his foot over the slabs] and he smashed [Parker swung his arm like a town crier] and smashed and smashed—
I: I get the gist.
Parker stopped, wild with the passion of his performance, and said breathlessly: Then he whacked her dog. [He ended with a tame flick of his wrist.]
I: Mrs Prendergast’s dog? You are sure of that?
Parker leaned his shoulder against the wall and wheezed: Brought it with her, they did, but I told them a human mortuary ain’t no place for a dead cur.
I: So what happened to it?
He cast his imaginary iron bar aside: They dumped it here. I took it out the front and threw it in the bin.
I: How often are those bins emptied?
Parker squinted and said: I don’t know that they are ever emptied. Anything the rats, cats and brats don’t want just rots down.
I tossed him a florin but he fumbled and it rolled along the floor. He was still scrabbling after it when I availed myself of the exit.
I poked about with my cane. The dog, a putrescent black-and-tan Cavalier King Charles spaniel, was near the top and still in quite good condition. I did not need it all and I did not have my swordstick with me, so I took out my spring knife and cut off the head, wrapping it in a canvas bag from my satchel.
86
Late Thursday Morning
NO DOUBT MISS Middleton would have depicted Mr Reginald ‘Rosie’ Rosewood as an eccentric character, but there was little odd about his collection of shadows. As he himself reasoned, we are all born with at least one. It was a little unusual to find that the window of his office was boarded over, but the room was lit brightly enough by the thirty-one oil lamps placed on little tables of varying heights all around me.
He: [with great satisfaction] This is what started me off. [He touched a battered lamp with a chewed Derwent pencil.] Imagine my chagrin when I knocked this lantern over and smashed the glass.
I: I dislike imagining other people’s chagrin. It is always disappointing.
[Mr Rosewood had an elongated angular skeleton enveloped in a loose-fitting epidermis, as if he had borrowed a larger man’s skin. He wore a long Prussian blue coat with brass buttons.]
He: Imagine then my joy when, upon fitting a new chimney, I found that the bent reflector cast a shadow on the wall which was the spitting image of… [He paused quizzically and I glanced at the faint umbra cast upon the wall behind the lamp.]
I filled the pause: A guillotine. Now if—
[Rosewood tittered and I do not care for men who titter. All senses of humour are silly but theirs is invariably the silliest.]
He: You are toying with me, Mr Grice. Be serious.
I: [neglecting to mention that I had already conceived a dislike for him] There [for his benefit I indicated with my patent surgical cane] is the blade and there the basket.
[Apparently my diagnosis was not acceptable to Rosewood.]
He tittered again and said: It is Jumbo, the elephant. See [he outlined the details with sweeps of his attenuated digits] – the trunk and three of the legs.
I: Having seen Jumbo on six occasions, I am qualified to inform you that he and a certain lady – who must, for the purposes of this meeting, remain anonymous – were the only things I could justifiably describe as magnificent creatures, and neither of them bore more than a fleeting resemblance to that implement of execution.
Rosewood grimaced: Take a look at this one then, a particular favourite with the ladies.
[The shadow cast by the flicker of a candle on the ceiling was indeed interesting, being a vivid depiction of a Scotsman self-immolating with a garden hoe.]
I: You have some sanguinary clients.
Rosewood gibbered: The Niagara falls.
I: [playfully] Balderdash. But it is a very good representation of that enterprising Hibernian William Burke, riding a donkey.
He: [snappily] It shows the death of Cleopatra.
To which I gently replied: Utter drivel.
Rosewood’s manner became distinctly peevish and he asked sharply: What is your business, Mr Grice?
I said: I believe you are dealing with the estate of the late and exasperating Mrs Prendergast.
He: You have been informed correctly. [He prodded with his quill.] Can you not see the asp poised to strike at her breast?
I: Those are the donkey’s reins.
Rosewood tutted: I know you are disadvantaged by having a glass eye but—
I responded lightly: In what nine ways does having a glass eye disadvantage me? Lacking an organic eye might be of hindrance to one with such stunted intelligence as yourself, but I can assure you it has not hampered me in the least. Indeed, it was only my ocular prosthesis and startlingly quick wits that saved me from a rampaging mob eight months and one week ago tomorrow. [And, as if taking this as its cue, my right eye jumped out of its socket. I caught it deftly, not pausing in my pleasant banter.] What is the exact value of Mrs Prendergast’s estate?
Rosewood inhaled sharply in the way that some men do when they have trodden on broken teapot spouts and said: Why do you wish to know?
I told him graciously: That is not your concern.
He sat even taller, though his skin still hung loosely, and said: Mrs Prendergast was my client and her financial affairs are confidential.
I: Which is exactly why you will give me all her records.
He: It is exactly why I shall not.
I looked at the silhouette of a gibbet on the wall behind him and said: If you do not pass them to me I shall denounce you as a fraud and a forger.
Rosewood: [clucking indignantly] This is outrageous.
I: Not quite as outrageous as imitating the signature of your cousin Mr William ‘Woody’ Rosewood on his last will and testament, and inducing two members of his staff to put their names to the document in exchange for the use of a cottage in Glasgow.
He: [ninety-four per centum less jolly than he had been eight minutes ago] You cannot prove that.
I: I do not need to because I have a disreputable acquaintance who can produce a better forgery, dated after the one by which you inherited Woody’s fortune, and leaving his entire estate to the aforementioned servants. This document might be discovered hidden in your vulgar abode in which case you would be penniless, disbarred and imprisoned.
He: [crossly] This is blackmail.
I: [omitting to mention that I would be ethically unable to sanction such deceits] It would also be breaking and entering, counterfeiting and fraud.
Rosewood snapped the quill which he, but not I, had forgotten he was holding and said: Very well.
[He swivelled in his poorly lubricated chair and wrenched open the top drawer of his filing cabinet. Whilst he was rifling through his files, I put my hands in front of a lamp and cast a rather fine dove on to the side of a bookcase.]
I chatted: My father’s under-butler taught me to do that.
He: What? [Rosewood spun squeakily back and witnessed the splendidly flapping wings.] Any child could do that.
I reasoned: Not all children can. A child who lost her hands in an accident with a power loom in a Lancashire cotton mill would not be able to do so.
He: If you are hoping to get hold of Mrs Prendergast’s money, you will be gravely disappointed. [Rosewood held up a cardboard file in a manner reminiscent of Moses with his decade of ethical instructions.] She died penniless and in debt.
I mused: I sometimes like being disappointed, but that is excellent news.
[Rosewood slapped a cardboard file on to his desk with such violence
that the lamp fell and smashed on the floor, spilling its contents over an eight-guinea circular rug from Bruges.]
He: Damn. [The fuel ignited. If I had feelings they would have been aroused by a similar incident in Highgate with an oil lamp and the flames leaping upward. He flapped hopelessly.] Help me!
[He scattered the water from his lead crystal tumbler but only succeeded in producing a little steam.]
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 29