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

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  That seems an odd way of declaring his innocence and yet it is difficult to imagine he was guilty and yet…

  ‘There is something you are not telling me,’ I accuse, and my guardian lowers his gaze and then his head.

  ‘You are right.’ His hand tightens on mine and he falls silent for a while. ‘And you have every right to know.’ He clears his throat and looks up again. ‘On 5 November 1862—’

  ‘The day of my birth.’

  ‘Quite so. My father was shot. I shall not go into the details now but he suffered two wounds – one in his left arm and the other in his chest. It lodged just under his heart. My parents had a house in Bedford Square and yours had taken one nearby for the season. I ran across and asked your father to help. I did not need to beg. Your mother was healthy and with friends, and you were not due for another three weeks. Your father saved my father’s life – there is no doubt about that – but when he got home he found that your mother had gone into a sudden and very difficult labour. Her friends did not know where I lived to alert him and had called upon a highly successful surgeon who lived next door. His name was Cunningham and he was fortunate to die from a heart attack two days later before your father recovered his faculties. I do not say that he killed your mother – nature did that – but he tried to delay your birth with catastrophic results. Some people blamed me. I have always had many enemies and it is conceivable that, had I not called upon your father, he might have saved his wife, but he did not think so.’

  ‘If my father did not blame you, you cannot blame yourself,’ I say. ‘And neither do I. But why did you not tell me this before?’

  Sidney Grice shrugs and his head goes down again, but he does not reply.

  ‘You are hiding something from me,’ I say and Sidney Grice shakes his head.

  ‘No,’ he tells me very quietly. ‘I am hiding a great many things.’ He rubs his injured shoulder. ‘If ever you get out of here, do you want to leave our home?’ he asks at last. ‘I will assist you in any way I can.’

  ‘Where would I go?’ I respond. ‘You are my protector and you called it our home.’

  My guardian pats my shoulder awkwardly and shivers, and I look down to see a drop of water on the back of his hand.

  And, as I lie in bed that night looking out into the starless sky, I think about that shadow on my guardian’s face. The sadness has been there since the day I met Sidney Grice and I cannot imagine it will ever go away.

  Publisher’s Note

  This was the last note written by Miss Middleton before she was taken from her cell.

  Part IV

  Extracts from the Journals of March Middleton

  104

  The Last Day

  IT WAS A sunday morning when they came for me. I heard the bells of the city peel and the one bell of the chapel toll its measured beat.

  The padre was there and two guards, one the little man I did not like and the other a fat middle-aged man who had been kind to me.

  ‘Is this my last day?’ I asked and the little man bowed his head.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I am not ready,’ I protested. ‘You should have warned me.’

  And the wan-faced chaplain said gently, ‘Come along, March.’

  ‘You should have told me,’ I protested. ‘I have had no time to prepare myself.’

  ‘They are never ready.’ The little warder smirked.

  The kind guard put a hand on my arm. ‘Surely you knew it was coming.’

  I nodded. ‘But not today.’

  We walked to the wooden platform set up in the courtyard and I glanced up to see the two other prisoners watching from the laundry-room window. We went around the platform.

  ‘Pity you will miss our concert,’ the padre said.

  We went into the office and the governor rose behind his desk.

  ‘Hello, March.’ Sidney Grice stood by the unlit fire. ‘I told you I would be here.’

  ‘Is this my last day?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is time to leave.’

  ‘Leave?’ I took hold of my sleeves above both elbows.

  Sidney Grice came up to me.

  ‘All charges have been dropped.’ The governor beamed. ‘And the doctors have pronounced you cured.’

  ‘Of what?’ I looked from face to face.

  Mr G brushed my right hand as lightly as one might a cobweb. ‘I will explain it all.’

  ‘’Ere’s your ’andbag,’ the mean guard said. ‘And we ain’t taken nuffink from it.’

  I rooted about and shook my father’s hip flask. It was empty as was the silver cigarette case.

  ‘Have one of mine.’ The nice warder held out his pewter case and I picked one out. He lit it for me.

  My hand was steady, I was proud to note, because my insides were fluttering like a caged crow. I inhaled deeply and the effect was immediate. I felt dizzy and sick and absolutely wonderful.

  Mr G watched disapprovingly but I did not care.

  The governor grasped my hand. ‘I wish you well.’

  For a moment I felt I should say how much I had enjoyed my stay or thank him for having me but, even in my confusion, I knew that would not be fitting.

  They stood round me, watching me smoke as if I were an entertainment.

  ‘You’ll soon be back,’ the mean warder forecast.

  ‘May I shake your hand too, miss?’ the nice warder asked and wrapped his fist so hard round mine that I felt my bones shift.

  I tossed my cigarette into the fireplace and straightened up.

  ‘Thank you for what you have done.’ The remark was only intended for one of them, but the other two assured me it had been their greatest pleasure. ‘Give me your arm please, Godfather.’

  Side by side we walked out of the office, down the hallways and through the doors until at last we came to the iron-studded outer door, and then we were on the street. I glanced back at the sign over the gate: The Ambrose Hospital For Mental Diseases.

  ‘They left you here when the election was postponed,’ Sidney Grice told me, as if that meant something.

  Ahead of us Gerry Dawson waited by his hansom with his old piebald mare, Meg, in harness, and I wished I had an apple core for her.

  There was a little bouquet of dried flowers on the seat.

  ‘Welcome back, miss,’ Gerry called and I mouthed thank you dumbly.

  I do not remember the journey. We were on the pavement and Mr G had yet to ring the bell when I burst into tears, and for the first time ever my guardian put his arms round me, holding me so tightly that I could hardly catch my sobbing breath. And I buried myself deep in him and wept some of my agony into his embrace.

  He stroked my hair. ‘Oh, my dear, dear March,’ he murmured, and the front door opened.

  ‘Oh flip.’ Molly touched a gash on her cheek. ‘I was just sneaking out to post that letter that you tolded me to last week.’

  105

  The Ring in the Flames

  I HAD CHICKEN. It had been run over by a bicyclist in Leicester Square, Sidney Grice assured me, and so he had only five objections to me eating it. I had become repulsively scrawny, he explained, and needed building up, but he would not put any in his mouth. Cook had boiled the poor bird until the meat was disintegrating and it was served with her usual vegetable gruel, but I could not remember when I had relished a meal so much.

  And I was allowed red wine to strengthen my blood. I would rather have had gin but consoled myself with the knowledge that Molly had sneaked some into my room.

  Mr G recounted what he knew about Groggy and Barney and what he had surmised about the death of my father – but I was too numb to cry again.

  ‘Then we must find him.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  I had never known him to admit defeat before and I did not know what to say. I sipped my wine. ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’

  My guardian picked something brown, about the size of a plum stone, off his plate. ‘To gain control of your financial a
ffairs before Gregory did.’

  ‘But surely no vicar would have officiated whilst I was legally insane.’

  ‘You were relatively lucid for a time.’ He scrutinized his find. ‘I intended to have you declared competent, marry you and have you recertified again.’ He analysed its aroma before adding hastily, ‘Needless to say, the offer is withdrawn.’

  ‘But I never accepted it anyway.’

  ‘No.’ He tugged at his scarred ear lobe. ‘But I am terrified that you will.’

  Out of the depths of my misery I managed a wry smile. ‘Would it have been that awful?’

  ‘Try to imagine how bad a wife you would make.’ He held the lump out at arm’s length. ‘You would be much worse than that.’ He pushed it back into his food and announced, ‘Quigley came to tell me that you were being sent for trial, but really to gloat. He was lucky to be carried on to the street alive.’

  ‘Carried? You did not—’

  Sidney Grice waved a hand. ‘Molly set about him with as fine a flurry of punches as I have ever witnessed.’

  ‘Is that how she got her face cut?’

  ‘That was when I took the carving knife off her. No doubt I shall regret my action one day soon.’

  ‘She did threaten to cut his throat.’ I took a glass of water. ‘Did he press charges?’

  ‘Would you, a police inspector with a reputation for toughness, announce that you had been beaten up by a maid in a fair fight?’

  I laughed. ‘Perhaps not.’ I searched my mind. ‘I do not remember my trial.’

  ‘There was none.’ He put a finger gingerly under his patch. ‘And you were only back in prison for nine days before they sent you to the Ambrose Hospital.’ His voice became gruff. ‘You have Trumpington to thank for that. He ran a campaign on your behalf.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘So he was my friend after all.’

  The front door closed.

  My guardian puffed. ‘Do not be too grateful. First, he did it, as he does everything, to sell newspapers. Second, he ran it along the lines of would a pretty girl have been treated so shabbily?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And you have Pound to thank for your acquittal, but I shall leave him to explain that to you.’

  He returned to his meal as Molly clomped up the stairs.

  ‘’Spector Pound is here.’

  ‘I am going to have some more of this delicious turnip,’ Sidney Grice recited as he went to the sideboard. ‘You had better go and see what he wants.’

  It was with a heavy heart that I rose and made my way down the stairs.

  Pound stood in the middle of the room. ‘Hello, March.’

  ‘Inspector.’

  ‘I wish you’d call me George when we’re alone.’ He was drawn, bloody-eyed, and his walk was flat as he approached me.

  ‘George.’ It was the first time I had addressed him by his first name.

  I went to the window and he followed, standing behind me. The street was dark, the gaslights no more than feeble beacons for the few pedestrians.

  He grunted. ‘They would not let me visit.’

  ‘I would not have wanted you to see me like that.’

  He touched my shoulder and I put my hand to his.

  ‘I would not have cared how you looked if I could have been with you.’ His hand squeezed me gently.

  I turned so that I was side on to him. ‘I am not a pretty sight at the moment… my hair…’

  Pound ran his fingers down it and let them rest on my cheek. ‘When I first met you I was unforgivably rude.’

  ‘No worse than any other man.’

  ‘I called you a mere girl.’

  ‘I remember.’

  His deep blue eyes were bloodshot and underscored with dark crescents. ‘And I said that you were plain.’

  ‘I remember that too, but you meant it kindly.’

  ‘I was a fool, March.’ He took my hand. ‘And blind. I look at you now, worn out by your ordeal but still with that spark inside you, and I see that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever known.’

  Another man told me that once in another country and, it seemed, another life. I still have the letter to prove it.

  ‘I believe you were instrumental in having me set free.’

  He took my fingers one by one. ‘It was my sister’s idea.’

  ‘Lucinda?’

  Lucinda did not like me and made no bones about it.

  ‘When Mr Grice gave up, I got drunk,’ Pound confessed. ‘It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, but it was one of the most stupid things I have ever done. Can you imagine what it is like being ill while your insides are trying to burst out of you?’

  I knew all too well what a hangover was like. ‘I dread to think.’

  A dray trundled by, carrying a mound of something covered in sacking.

  ‘Lucinda does not approve of drink and she has good reason not to but, equally, she doesn’t like to see her younger brother so miserable. She had a long think and asked if I was sure that Gregory had not said anything else that might help us.’

  ‘And had he?’

  Pound folded my hand in both of his. ‘She asked the question in a very pointed way and I was a bit slow on the uptake, but then I realized what she meant.’ He looked at the floor. ‘It was then I told her that I “remembered” that, as I put my ear to Gregory’s mouth, with his dying breath he told me he had attacked Gloria Shell with a claw hammer.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  The inspector looked up but past me. Outside the girl with one ear was selling noo lied th’eggs.

  ‘Not only that but he described the unusually shaped jelly mould hanging over the dresser. Nobody could have known about that unless they were in the room.’

  I stared at him, this new, troubled man.

  ‘But did nobody ask why you had not reported this earlier?’

  ‘I said that I was too ill.’ He exhaled. ‘But as soon as I told your guardian he paid the Home Secretary a visit and then he called in a favour from Chief Superintendent Butcher.’

  ‘To do what?’ I put my other hand on top of his but he did not seem to notice.

  ‘To get Quigley out of the way for a day or two. He was sent to assist investigating a death in Devon.’

  I managed to catch Inspector Pound’s eye but I could not hold it.

  ‘I had a lot of time to think in that place – once I was capable of rational thought.’ I swallowed. ‘When you gave me your mother’s ring to wear around my neck, I thought you had given me your heart.’

  ‘I had, my dearest.’

  ‘But I cannot give you mine,’ I said and his grip crushed my fingers, ‘not while I wish in every waking moment that I could still wear somebody else’s.’

  ‘There is another man.’ He was hurting me.

  ‘There was but I cannot have him.’

  Pound darkened. ‘Is he married?’

  I took a breath. ‘We were engaged when I was in India but he was killed.’

  I did not add by me but I could not meet his eye.

  Pound took his hand away. ‘I cannot compete with a dead man. I will make mistakes. I will be tired and sometimes I am grumpy. He will never put a foot wrong.’

  I reached behind my neck and a shaft of pain shot up him as I pulled the cord over my head.

  ‘If it were not for Edward…’ I put it in his hand. ‘I am truly sorry.’

  ‘I perjured myself for you.’

  ‘I wish to God that you had not.’

  ‘Damn him.’ Inspector Pound made a tight fist and pulled it back and a rage burst out that I had not imagined he had in him. ‘I hope he is in hell.’ His arm whipped forward and he hurled his mother’s ring into the glowing fire.

  ‘If he were I would be seeing him now,’ I whispered, but George Pound had wrenched open the door.

  ‘Leaving so soon?’ Sidney Grice called down.

  ‘I should never have come,’ the inspector shouted as he rushed outside.
>
  106

  Beside the Grandfather Clock

  AFTER MY APPOINTMENT with Trafalgar Trumpington and meeting with Harriet I went back to Parbold. The lease had fallen through before the new tenants had even moved in. They had second thoughts about the amount of work needed to make the property comfortable but I was not seeking comfort, only solace and what was mine.

  George Carpenter, the old gamekeeper, met me at the station with Onion, his ageing donkey, to haul my luggage up the steep hill.

  Maudy Glass came that evening.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said, ‘but I need to be alone.’

  For her own sake I could not tell her why. Maudy’s neck reddened and she marched away.

  I ate the steak and kidney pie Mrs Carpenter had baked for me and raided what I still thought of as my father’s cellar for an old claret.

  The next morning there was a mist over the valley but it cleared as I walked into the village, down the hill to Station Road and sent a telegram. There was only one person I trusted to help me now. On the way back I stopped at the church on the hill and visited the graves – Daisy Gregory was laid to rest near the entrance. Her mother had been denied a Christian plot.

  In the far corner, a little way down the slope, was the Middleton Plot – twenty-four graves in the shade of a yew tree, eight of them being my father’s siblings who had died in infancy, the most recent being my mother’s and his. I could not get flowers in the village but my father would not have cared. He never saw the point in visiting his own parents’ graves. I bowed my head and prayed.

  The next two days passed slowly. I tried to read but could not concentrate. I walked the old walks and threw sticks in the brook. I made a lackadaisical attempt to tame my old herb garden. But mostly I sat staring across the Douglas Valley to Ashurst Beacon and smoked and drank too much.