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

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  I adopted a stray cat. It was a flea-bitten tabby with too few teeth to catch its own food and had come scavenging round the kitchen door. I called it Juniper but, from the lack of response to my clicking my fingers behind it, I could have called the old creature anything.

  I remembered my father telling me that the greatest problem they used to have with troops awaiting action was not fear but boredom. Juniper at least gave me an interest in life, and I was just looking for my favourite carving knife to chop her food when I heard a thud. Juniper must have knocked something over.

  ‘Silly boy,’ I called as I went into the hallway.

  ‘Is that any way to greet a friend,’ the man I had known as Colwyn said from beside the grandfather clock.

  107

  Goldilocks and the Man in the Furnace

  ‘BARNEY! YOU MADE me jump.’

  He came into the hall, his hands behind his back, and my first thought was of the missing carving knife. ‘You know me this time then?’

  ‘We were children when I last saw you here.’ I moved back a little. ‘And you had beautiful blond hair.’

  Barney came towards me. ‘You called me Goldilocks,’ he recalled. ‘And that vulgar Glass girl took it up. Goldilocks Goldilocks Goldilocks,’ he chanted bitterly.

  He stopped about a yard from me and I backed away a little more. He was very elegant in his black coat and grey trousers and his cravat arranged like a double pink camellia.

  ‘I was jealous,’ I admitted. ‘But I did not mean to hurt you.’

  I set another foot behind me and then to the side, but Barney shadowed every move.

  ‘Your tongue was always too sharp for your own good.’ He sniffed. ‘That was my greatest fear, that you would recognize me, but it is incredible what time, torment and a bottle of cheap dye can do to a man.’

  We continued our bizarre dance.

  ‘But how did you get in?’

  ‘I know this house,’ he reminded me. ‘And love knows no locksmith.’

  I fought the temptation to run and said, ‘I almost knew it was you from my first visit.’ Backwards and sideways we went. ‘Something flitted through my mind but I did not believe it. Then when you told me Jennifer was a donkey…’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The way you said it to rhyme with monkey.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember.’ Barney flicked his head bitterly. ‘You mocked me about that too.’

  I tried to pacify him. ‘I laughed because I thought it was sweet.’

  ‘Sweet?’ He chewed the word over.

  ‘You used to be so kind.’ I felt the mantelpiece in my back. ‘And brave. Remember how you rescued Jumble from the canal?’ I slid to the left. ‘And when that mastiff escaped? It killed poor Jumble and was turning on me before you beat it away.’

  Barney tittered. ‘Who do you think threw your mutt into the water in the first place? And who do you think set that hound on you?’ He came close. ‘Go on, Marchy, reach for the poker.’

  I glanced down and saw that he was producing it from behind his back.

  ‘What is all this for?’ I asked as Barney raised the poker to face height, like a dragoon presenting his sabre on parade.

  He sniggered meanly. ‘Have you and your sickly lover not guessed?’

  ‘He is not my lover.’

  Barney grinned and for a moment I saw the happy boy, but the grin curdled as he said, ‘Neither is he your guardian.’

  There was a scarred lead cannonball on the mantelpiece to my left. I had found it in a ploughed field near Cromwell’s Forge when I was eight. I shuffled a fraction towards that.

  ‘Why did your father want me for his ward?’

  Barney shouldered the poker. ‘To protect you, March, to get you away from Gower Street. My father genuinely believed that Grice was destroying you, just as strongly as he had argued with your father about the things he put you through. He would have liked to apply for adoption when your father died – you were always the daughter he lost – but he knew he would not have the time.’

  I shook my head. ‘There was more to it than that.’

  ‘He was persuaded by Mrs Prendergast. She said she knew you well and was shocked by the way you were being treated – though she had never met you at the time.’ Barney put one hand to the chimneybreast to stop me edging any further along. ‘Cromwell will not save you.’

  ‘I still do not understand why.’

  Barney giggled. ‘Oh, Marchy, you used to be much quicker than that.’ He was very close to me. ‘The object of it all – Tolly’s fake death, his real death, Mrs P, Annie the maid—’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Oh, you sweet innocent.’ Barney toyed with my hair. ‘Of course it was Annie, poor harelipped stupid Annie. When she saw me sneaking down to swap the ammunition in that gun, she believed my story that it was the skeleton. She was so grateful to have a man court her that she would have died for me given the chance, but I never gave her that choice, Marchy. She knew too much and, when she caught me with Mrs P’s maid, Gloria, she threatened to go to the police. Gloria was the one who gave me the knife and put it back in the drawer after I had jammed the trick blade. I knew that Prendergast would be too lard-brained to double-check it.’

  ‘Is that how you burned your hand – with a soldering iron?’

  ‘It is nearly healed.’ He pressed the blister to my lips and I forced myself not to recoil.

  ‘You used to love making things in Groggy’s workshop,’ I recollected, in the hope of rekindling affectionate memories, but Barney’s mood changed in an instant.

  He whipped his arm away. ‘Groggy,’ he raged. ‘I called my father Puppa when I was little and he adopted the name quite happily until you came along.’ His left cheek ticked rabidly. ‘Then it was Groggy this and Groggy that, and the next time I called him Puppa he told me to grow up.’

  The words sprayed in dark droplets.

  ‘So is Gloria still alive?’ I asked as calmly as I could.

  The tic slowed and Barney giggled again. ‘She was until last night, but I had to give Pound and Grice something to occupy them while I was here. I watched them go to examine the body – what there was left of it – before I set off for Euston. Even if they realized immediately, they could not get here for at least another two and a half hours.’ His finger ran round the rim of my ear. ‘The aim was never to have you hanged, Marchy. You were no use to us dead. We had to drive you mad, or at least convince the courts that you were.’ He went round again, very slowly inside the rim. ‘But you recovered from Tolly’s fake death and so I had to devise his real murder in a way that only a lunatic would have carried it out.’ He rested his forehead against mine. ‘Your damned godfather saw through that one and so Mrs P had to go.’

  ‘Luckily for you, Mr Grice and Inspector Pound were both too ill to help me by then.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Barney straightened up. ‘Then, once you were made Father’s ward and declared mentally incompetent, he could have controlled your shares.’

  ‘The Blue Lake Mining Company? You did it all for that?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘I know nothing of any mines,’ he pinched my lobe gently between thumb and forefinger, ‘though that might be a bonus. This…’ His arm swam about. ‘Swandale’s is what I am after.’

  ‘So it was all just for money?’ I could not look at him.

  ‘Only a rich girl would say that,’ Barney spat. ‘Just money?’ He flushed. ‘Have you any idea what rival governments would bid for the means to obliterate their enemies’ armies or exterminate their populations? We could have held the whole world to ransom.’ He was crushing my lobe now in his excitement. Then his expression hardened. ‘But even with Dom Hart disposed of, the new abbot was just as much against the project. So we still needed your vote to go ahead.’

  ‘You killed Dom Hart?’ I fought down an urge to push him away. ‘Mr Grice accused Brother Jerome of that.’

  ‘Oh, Jerome did it.’ Barney shrugged. ‘All men have t
heir weaknesses and the abbot’s was his taste for Communion wine. But your detective should have delved a little deeper.’

  ‘He had no time,’ I said. We both knew why Sidney Grice had been called back to London. ‘But what should he have found?’

  Barney grinned. ‘Mr Prendergast’s cousin, Francis, was a noviciate at Claister Abbey. That was how Prendergast met Dom Hart and told him about Swandale’s. In a world where men are supposed to be chaste they very often find themselves being chased. Fortunately for us, Brother Jerome took an… interest in young Francis.’ Barney leered. ‘Francis was shocked but, being new to the monastery, he did not know whom he could trust and confided in his cousin, who told Mrs Prendergast, who told me. Jerome was given a simple choice – adulterate his detested superior’s wine or let the relationship be exposed and be defrocked and cast out of the abbey to face criminal charges.’ He kneaded on my lobe.

  ‘It cannot have just been a coincidence that Mr Grice was called away for that case,’ I reasoned and his grip slackened.

  ‘Of course not. Once Jerome had committed murder he was in my power. As temporary head of the monastery, he did as I instructed and summoned your godfather.’

  ‘That was taking quite a risk,’ I observed.

  Barney tilted his head. ‘Not really. Jerome does not even know who I am.’

  ‘That was clever of you.’ I leaned my head a fraction into his hand. ‘But surely, even if your father had gained custody of me, he was always against the project.’

  Barney cupped my ear. ‘Papa was in two minds. He was a good-hearted man and did not care for the idea of gassing people, but equally he did not want any other country to steal the march on us. We were going to convince him that Jonathon Pillow had managed to re-create his work in Paris. He would have given the work his – and your – full blessing then.’

  ‘So what happened to Jonathon Pillow?’ I shivered and saw a thrill run through him.

  ‘Johnny got greedy.’ Barney ran his hand down to the side of my neck. ‘He thought that we could not manage without him and tried to get a bigger cut of the profits.’

  ‘The man in the furnace,’ I guessed.

  Barney’s voice rose excitedly. ‘Lord, how he sobbed and begged before I had even lit the fire. Oh, Marchy, if only you could have seen him trying to stamp out the fire, dancing about like a cat on pins, how he tried to beat the flames off his trousers, how he climbed up a pile of clinker and how he screamed when it collapsed and he fell over into the flames, rolling around like a pig on a spit.’ Barney quaked with laughter. ‘His face went like crackling, Marchy, all bubbled and brown while he was still,’ Barney fought for breath, ‘…alive,’ he managed at last.

  I put my hand over his. ‘I never liked that man.’ Barney raised his eyebrows as I continued. ‘The shame of it all, Barney,’ I intertwined my fingers with his, ‘is that, if anyone had asked me, I would have given the production my full support.’

  He snorted. ‘But you were horrified by that demonstration. Pillow told me all about it,’ Barney smirked, ‘while he was still raw.’

  ‘I was a child then.’ I leaned my head back. ‘But, in case you have not noticed, I am a woman now.’ I put my hair behind my ear. ‘You said you would marry me, Barney.’

  Barney’s eyes flickered. ‘And your father mocked me.’

  ‘He just thought we were too young to think that way.’

  ‘He despised me,’ Barney burst out. ‘You had The Grange while we just had the Old Hall House. Your family had been there for centuries while mine were newcomers. Your father was a magistrate. Mine was not. Your father was a colonel and mine just a major.’

  ‘No, Barney, my father had a great respect for yours and he always liked you.’ I put my left hand on his sleeve. ‘And so did I.’ I squeezed his arm. ‘I waited for you.’

  He caressed my cheek. ‘Made a bit of a mess of your face, didn’t I?’

  ‘So that was you who put the sack over me?’ I nuzzled his palm.

  ‘Me.’ Barney toyed with my ear. ‘And Tolly. He excelled himself that day, doing two voices arguing with each other. We rehearsed the part for hours.’

  ‘I heard his knees double-click when he tied me in the stable and when he kneeled to untie me in his study,’ I realized.

  ‘Pity you did not put two and two together then.’

  I closed my eyes very briefly. ‘You were always good at acting. Remember how you took the role of my beau in that play?’ I stroked my left hand down on to his right. ‘No need to pretend anymore.’ I felt the poker. ‘And you will not need that to get me to,’ I sighed and drew him to me, ‘…cooperate.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ I could feel his breath on my face. It was soft and fresh. His nose nudged mine. ‘But why…’

  ‘Why, what?’

  ‘Take the risk?’ I saw the poker rise. There was what sounded like a gunshot and the world went out.

  108

  The Rope and the Number

  I DO NOT know how long I was unconscious but when I awoke my head was pounding and my arms were raised high, and as my eyes began to focus I found that we were in the meeting room next to the laboratory of Swandale’s Chemicals. It must have taken Barney at least ten minutes to carry me there, out of the house and along the path across the fields. I had not been in that building since the day they gassed the pigs but little had changed, and nothing for the better. There were cobwebs over the portholes now and thick dust on the oval conference table, the chairs pushed back as if Jonathon Pillow had just finished addressing us, and I found myself standing, propped against the same pillar where I had sipped my lukewarm lemonade all those years ago.

  I drifted but was brought back by a sudden sharp pain in my wrists. There was a thin rope round them and Barney was passing that rope through a metal lamp loop on the ceiling, and standing on a scuffed desk.

  ‘Don’t have much luck with pokers, do you, Marchy?’ he remarked happily. ‘It was a nice try.’ He jumped down and hauled on the cord, pulling it tight so that, even when I stood on tiptoes, the knot dug in. ‘But why would I let you seduce me when I can have you anyway?’

  He tied the free end round the pillar.

  ‘Have you forgotten what friends we were?’ I asked. ‘What happened to the boy I played with?’

  Barney screwed up his face. ‘He was smashed on the rocks.’ Barney glanced over his shoulder edgily and his voice grew ragged. ‘The Quirry got me, Marchy. While I lay there broken and helpless, it scrambled down the dark side of the cliff.’

  ‘That was me, Barney,’ I told him. ‘I climbed down to help you.’

  He laughed mockingly. ‘No human could have slithered like that.’ Barney stared as if still seeing the object of his delusion. ‘It waited behind a boulder for the sun to set and crept towards me along the lengthening shadow, and when the darkness reached me so did the Quirry. I saw it, Marchy, scuttling like a gigantic loathsome spider, rearing up with its moth’s head.’

  ‘You were confused,’ I reasoned. ‘The Quirry was just a story, Barney.’

  His head went slowly from side to side. ‘I am proof that it was not.’

  Barney shuddered. ‘It plunged its proboscis into the wound in my belly and sucked my innards out, just like you said.’ His whole body trembled with the memory. ‘Can you imagine how that feels, Marchy – lying there paralysed, not even able to scream? But you went for help, didn’t you? And when they came – our fathers who art now in heaven – they took the Quirry by surprise and so it crawled inside me and hid in my shell like a hermit crab.’

  ‘Maudy went for help,’ I explained. ‘I tried to staunch the bleeding in your stomach with part of my petticoats.’

  But my words went unheeded and all despair of the earth broke over Barney. His face and body sagged under its weight.

  ‘What you see and hear is the body that Barney wore, a glove puppet, moving at the whim of the Quirry.’ His voice, so dry and hollow, seemed hardly human now. ‘The little boy you knew died in that quarry,
and you should have left him there but, no, you saved the body and so the monster dwelled in me and became me.’

  His breath was short and fast.

  ‘No,’ I protested. ‘You lived, Barney.’

  ‘The Quirry,’ he insisted fiercely. ‘This is the Quirry.’ He thumped his chest. ‘The monster who killed my sweet sister and our doting mother.’

  ‘But your mother survived.’

  ‘She had a temporary reprieve,’ he corrected me. ‘Five years ago I found a sympathetic pock-nosed nurse to comfort me. Helga thought it was awful that I was not allowed to communicate with my mother and smuggled a letter out for me. Luckily, she couldn’t read English.’ Barney began to recite in a little boy’s voice. ‘Darling Mummy, I hope you can forgive me for my botched attempt on your life. Rest assured, as soon as I get out of here I shall make amends and finish off the job. Your loathing son, Barney.’ He flicked his head back. ‘Soon after she received my message my mother did the job for me – hacked herself apart with a carving knife in her stupid studio.’

  I shall never forget the horror that had swamped me when I heard that news. ‘Have you no remorse?’

  Barney stopped and chewed a fingerplate. He was breathing normally now. ‘Oh, Marchy,’ he said sadly, ‘I shall never forgive myself for not being there to watch.’

  ‘You cannot mean that. Your parents loved you.’

  He tugged with his incisors at a skin tag near the cuticle. ‘I was very upset when my father died,’ he admitted, ‘before I had the chance to kill him myself.’

  His words whipped into me.

  ‘Instead you killed mine,’ I cried out.

  And he wagged his finger. ‘Not I, Barney; I, the monster.’

  ‘I know you, Barney.’ I struggled with my bonds but they only cut deeper into my wrists. ‘You are still not so depraved as to force yourself upon me.’

  Barney howled with merriment, his shrieks echoing round the bare brick room. ‘Who do you think undressed you, Marchy; took off all those petticoats you were always complaining about; put your nightgown over your nakedness? I would have taken you there and then, but Tolly was such a prig.’