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

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  He: Do you have any cake? Chocolate preferably.

  She: We do have chocolate.

  He: [taking off his scarf] Good.

  She: [wiping her nose on the back of her hand] Or plain sponge.

  He: I will have chocolate.

  She: [examining the back of her hand] Or sponge with jam that tastes a bit like plum.

  He: [with unnecessary tetchiness] I will have chocolate.

  She: [wiping the back of her hand on her apron] Chocolate then.

  I: I wonder why she has not practised her guitar recently when she has been playing it for some months.

  She: How on earth did you know that?

  I: I was talking about, not to you.

  Pound pulled out a chair and sat on it: I think you might tell her… and me.

  I: Hold out your hands. [I stifled a yawn as she did so.] The right thumb is calloused on the side as happens with repeated strumming of that unpleasant implement. The epidermis on the tips of the left fingers is also thickened in narrow bands from repeatedly depressing and sliding along the strings. All these injuries are slightly inflamed, indicating that she is new to the task and therefore still at the learning stage of being instructed, if only by herself, but the fading of the outer wheals shows that she has not played the instrument for at least four days.

  The waitress scrutinized her injuries: Why, sir, you should be a detective.

  I: I shall bear your vocational advice in mind.

  Pound brought out his papers: I have been doing some investigation.

  I: As you have for many years.

  He: I mean into these murders. [He unfolded the papers.] I got my men to look into Mrs Prendergast’s background.

  [The waitress fetched a mud-coloured granular wedge]

  She announced, as if he, not I, had done something clever: Gave you an extra large piece.

  [Pound poured our teas.]

  I: And did they discover anything of interest?

  He: Quite a bit. [He put the papers on the table and ran his fingers down the closely written report.] The late Mr Prendergast left his widow very poorly provided for.

  I stirred my tea, admiring the miniature maelstrom created by the motion: I have already established that.

  Pound poured milk and shovelled two sugars into his, turning a clear elixir into a sickly off-white slurry and said: Yes, but I have found out why. [He paused in the stillborn hope of eliciting an enquiry from me.] Mr Titus Prendergast was a philanthropist.

  I straightened his untidily placed spoon: This is pertinent, but why?

  Pound dug a fork into his cake with some difficulty and said: Because he gave away most of his money and what little he had left he invested in an agricultural chemicals factory.

  I watched him chip away at his purchase before asking: Should I be familiar with this company?

  He stabbed the tines in: I thought you might be. Miss Middleton has shares in it.

  I: Miss Middleton keeps her certificates in a safety deposit box. I trust you have not been taking an undue interest in my ward’s financial affairs.

  He: [indignantly] Of course not. She told me about it. She did not think they are worth anything because the main part of the company closed down in ’74. It was starting to produce fertilizers for India, which her father had taken an interest in. The shareholders had to agree not to take any profits for the first five years.

  [I sampled my tea, which was drinkable but not pleasant. The woman with the red handbag slapped her son’s face and he yelped.]

  I: And why did Miss Middleton feel it necessary to tell you about this?

  [I made a note to scold her if she ever regained her faculties.]

  Pound put down his fork: Because she had a distressing experience there.

  I: I would be hard pressed to discover a location where she has not had an unpleasant time.

  Pound waved his arm at the waitress: I can’t eat this. Bring me something softer.

  And while the inspector gorged himself on grey sponge cake, he continued with a discourse on the subject of the porcine poisonings and how Colonel Middleton put a stop to the experiments, using his majority shareholding with another shareholder’s support.

  I: She tried to tell me about the pigs the last time I saw her.

  He: It must weigh heavily on her still.

  [He washed his food down with another cup of tea.]

  I: It was foolish of Middleton.

  Pound dropped crumbs on the table in an interesting pattern: What kind of a father would put a young girl through something like that?

  I: I was bemoaning the lost opportunity to crush the French once and for all.

  Pound coughed and sprayed some more crumbs into his tea: You cannot approve of killing innocent women and children.

  I covered my cup as he indulged in a small bronchospasm: I was thinking more of incapacitating their navy. We do not have Nelson to deal with them next time.

  [Pound controlled his indecorous display of irregular respiration.]

  He: But surely Swandale’s Chemicals was created to save lives.

  I: Swandale’s. [I opened my satchel and brought out the file.] I was going to read this thoroughly on the way here but you were so busy gossiping that I have not had the chance. That name seems very familiar. [I flicked through the preamble about how that Prendergast woman wanted to be disposed of and ran my eye down the list of assets.] Turner’s Tallow, Eagle Slate Quarries. Here it is… Swandale’s Chemicals.

  [I raised my brows and caught my eye just before it reached my tea. Pound winced. He was surprisingly squeamish for a man in his alleged profession.]

  He: From what Mar— Miss Middleton told me, the company was divided between six people. I think she inherited a majority shareholding from her father. It was his idea to buy the company and he persuaded the others to join him.

  [He devoured another piece of his cake.]

  I: You must send a reliable man straight to Companies House to discover the identity of the other shareholders immediately.

  [Pound rinsed his mouth with some more tea.]

  He: I have already done so.

  I: Why, Inspector Pound [I put the file away], you are in peril of becoming efficient.

  Pound started coughing again but at last he managed: Where shall I find you when I have the report?

  I: I shall be at home by six o’clock. In the meantime I am going to visit Miss Middleton.

  He: Please give her my… regards.

  I: They will do her no good.

  I called for the bill.

  97

  Late Saturday Afternoon

  I HAD TRIED to call in favours with the Home Secretary. He certainly owed me eight, not least of which for extricating a member of his family from a scandalous entanglement. But there was talk of an election and he did not wish to fight it as the man who had overruled the courts and medical opinion to release a mad homicidal spinster into society. I reminded him of the Mystery of the White Peacock and he was shaken but would not budge. In the end he agreed to Miss Middleton being transferred to a private secure establishment off Brunswick Gardens. At least this saved me having to communicate with Governor Kindred again, or the horrendous journey out to the Broadmoor Hospital in that eleventh circle of hell known as Berkshire.

  The institution was in an unimposing four-storey early Georgian detached house overlooking one side of the Foundling Hospital. It was almost indistinguishable from its neighbours except for the heavily barred windows and the sign declaring it to be the Saint Dymphna Asylum for the Incurably Insane.

  Dr Hepplewhite, the hospital director, was a cheerful man and larger than he needed to be, with polished teeth and heavy caramel hair and eyes that were a comfortable hazel.

  He pumped my hand effusively: Come through. Come through. You will have a Bristol Cream.

  [He had an interesting white growth on a stalk on his nose, and my elbows itched to snip it off for my collection.]

  I: That is either a lie or a mistake, an
d I am not sure I am happy that my ward should be in the care of a prevaricator or an incompetent.

  He: But I was only offering—

  I: Then you should learn to express yourself more precisely.

  He stopped outside the open doorway of a spacious office and asked: Do you always take things literally?

  I: If things are not literal, then they are not things, and if they are not things one cannot take them literally. If they are things, one must take them literally unless one wishes to be a fool, which I do not.

  Hepplewhite covered his big white teeth by elevating his lower lip, then pulled it down so that his upper lip went over his lower teeth before speaking: You might be an interesting case.

  I spurned the arm that tried to guide me into the room: I am interesting but I am not a case. However, I am here to investigate one and wish to see and speak to my ward.

  Hepplewhite pulled his lips to the left: You will not distress her.

  I: You speak the truth.

  He: No, I meant… never mind. I suppose we might as well go straight there. [We continued down the white-walled corridor.] How did you get on with your father as a child?

  I: I did not know him when he was one. How many victims do you have here?

  Hepplewhite’s lips oscillated: I prefer to think of them as patients. [He adjusted his stride awkwardly.] Twenty-four.

  I: And do you treat them all yourself?

  He stepped sideways. I and Dr Guess.

  I: Why?

  He: It is our job.

  We passed a series of five doors to our left and six to the right, set twelve feet apart. They were reinforced with iron straps and there were circular viewing holes in all of them and heavy locks. Each boasted a brass number plate.

  I: But the poorly lettered sign at the front of this building states that they are incurable.

  He: [taking a long stride then two very short] We live in hope.

  I: Is that what passes for scientific method amongst alienists?

  [There was also an interesting nodular wart on the back of his neck. I scratched my elbows simultaneously.]

  He: We call ourselves psychologists.

  I: But surely that implies that you are following a logical discipline. [He clacked his teeth but I continued.] If you will unlock this door I shall trouble you no further.

  He: But how do you know this is it?

  I: You and I have four ears evenly divided between us.

  He: I hear nothing.

  I: Then you have much in common with this particular victim for she never listens. [It was clear that I would have to explain.] She is humming what I imagine to be a tune.

  [Hepplewhite inserted a steel mortise key.]

  I: I did not expect to enjoy your company and I have not been disabused. It might, however, fascinate you to know that you trod on a knothole.

  [Hepplewhite’s lips tightened so that I would have had trouble introducing a letter knife between them, though I had no desire to do so.]

  He: Which one?

  I: Sixteen inches nor’-nor’west of room nine, the imperfection shaped like a camel’s lungs.

  Hepplewhite crossed himself and then his arms: Damnation and botheration. You were distracting me. Thank you so much. Now I shall have to start again.

  He threaded his way back the way we had come.

  I straightened my hair and my eye and my fourth best blood-red cravat. There is little written about the etiquette for the ingression of madhouse cells and I resolved to produce a paper on the matter one dry Tuesday morning. I knocked three times and entered.

  Miss Middleton was seated on her bed, dressed in grey sacking, with her booted feet on the floor and her hands folded on her lap.

  She stopped humming and greeted me amiably: Hello. Who are you?

  [I considered her question – not the answer, for I knew that, of course, but the reason she had posed it. Was this another sample of what she imagined to be a joke? She appeared to be genuinely puzzled. People who fake puzzlement generally overdo it and Miss Middleton was not an accomplished actress.]

  I: Who do you think I am?

  [Miss Middleton looked grave. She sucked her left little finger and was about to make a suggestion but dismissed it.]

  Her eyes closed and, when she opened them, they overflowed with tears: Daddy!

  [She held out her arms.]

  Hepplewhite joined us: I did it.

  [His face shone and he breathed fast.]

  I: She is very confused. Is there nothing you can do?

  Hepplewhite hooted: Of course not. She is completely mad. [He cocked his head as if listening to something, then whispered.] I am sorry, Mummy.

  98

  Saturday, Early Evening

  I WENT HOME and had not even started my first tea when Pound arrived.

  I: An extra cup for the inspector, Molly.

  He: No, thank you. I just had a mug at the station. Didn’t think I’d get offered one here. [He brought a wad of documents out of his brown leather messenger bag and sat with it on his lap.] This is everything we could find about Swandale’s Chemicals.

  He handed it across the table, a loose sheet drifting on to my tray. The pages were unnumbered, but by the weight and thickness it was clear there were one hundred and nine of them. They were tied with a red ribbon through one hundred and nine holes in the top left-hand corner, and to judge from the smell and discolouration they had been stored in a slightly damp basement north of the river. The pages had all been written by one clerk, a right-handed widower from Notting Hill. I flicked through. Despite all my practice, I have never been able to read and completely retain more than seven hundred and sixty words a minute. It was very frustrating but I persisted. Most of the document was about the constitution of the company. Its intentions were dispiritingly altruistic, that is, to assist our Asian empire to grow more food.

  He: There is a list of shareholders at the end.

  I: I daresay.

  [I went through its financial arrangements, which were prudent, and its aspirations for expansion, which were optimistic.]

  And I said: That is interesting. The shares cannot be sold. The founders were concerned that speculators might move in and use the facilities for more commercial purposes. They can only be passed to the shareholder’s child, an exception being made that Dom Hart could bequeath his allotment to his successor.

  [I got to the ultimate page.] Here we are. [I ran my finger down the list.]

  Colonel Geoffrey Charles Pemberton Middleton

  Mr Titus Paul Prendergast

  Mr Septimus Sextus Quintus Travers Smyth

  Major Bernard Samuel Vantage Gregory

  Brother Ignatius Anthony Hart OSB

  Mr Jonathon Pillow

  The document was dated 9 September 1873, which was a Tuesday, as I recalled, and five of the men had appended their signatures with Gregory signing pro persona Middleton who, a footnote explained, was in India but had written to authorize the action.

  Pound reached into the inner breast pocket of his coat.

  He: Why was Mr Swandale not a shareholder?

  I: [smoothing out a crease on the nineteenth page]: According to the preamble, Swandale was offered a share but preferred to sell his business to the others and take a regular salary. He died shortly afterwards, gored in the thigh by a boar. Some might call that poetic justice. I do not.

  [Pound brought out his meerschaum, doubtless fantasizing that I would say: By all means fill my home with noxious foul-smelling fumes. There is a shortage of those in London.]

  He: I assume Septimus Travers Smyth was Tolly’s father.

  I: [refraining from drawing his attention to a kink in his watch chain] An assumption made safe by my already having had his ancestry analysed.

  He: [glancing down to see what I was looking at, but doing nothing about it] And of course I know of Mr Prendergast and Colonel Middleton, but I don’t know anything about the other three.

  I: You know a great deal about them. You kn
ow their names, their professions, their addresses. You know exactly where they were three thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven days ago. You know that they were men of means to be able to finance so costly a project without making much of a dent in their own fortunes. Few men are so charitable as to spend money that they might miss. The only—