by Carol Hedges
The first things that strike the visitor’s eye, upon entering the dark maroon-and-gold-papered hallway, are the paintings. Every square inch of wall space is hung with paintings, their frames glowing softly in the dim light. The Thorpes intend their guests to be perfectly clear that here is a family with the resources (though not necessarily the taste) to be collectors of Art.
Josephine hovers awkwardly in the over-paintinged hallway, waiting for the Thorpes’ stiff-backed manservant to announce her. Even though it is her uncle’s post-funeral gathering, it is not her house, and so the rigid formalities have to be observed.
Eventually she is announced and shown into the big reception room overlooking the garden, where Mrs Thorpe greets her effusively, as if she is a stranger who has just arrived back from some far-flung land. Mr Thorpe greets her as if he has not got a clue who she is.
Upon an ornate mahogany sideboard is laid a cold collation of hams, chickens, salads and various cakes, all awaiting consumption. The amount of food seems to indicate that the mourners will be in a state of semi-starvation when they arrive.
Josephine eyes the groaning board with approbation. Funerals always make her hungry, and she has attended many funerals. The Bertha Helstone Institute for Orphaned Clergy Daughters was low-lying and damp, and girls were always succumbing to some sort of fever, and dying or being taken home to die.
On those occasions, all she was given to eat was a slice of bread and a bowl of weak cabbage soup, if she was lucky. Now she places herself strategically close to the side table and awaits the signal to begin. More guests arrive. They line up in the hallway, and hover with fixed expressions of solemnity. Those who have already been greeted circle the room, locating familiar faces, singling out old acquaintances. They acknowledge Josephine, then move away from her with elaborate care, as if she might be breakable, or possibly infectious.
The female mourners gradually congregate in one corner, in a tight little group. She knows none of them, so she cannot join them. Mrs Thorpe is too busy greeting to effect introductions, and Isabella has disappeared completely.
Josephine stands alone. All around her, conversations continue apace. She overhears little snippets: “Wonder where all his money will go ... Not short of a guinea or two, old Herbert ... Red hair, my dear - most unfortunate! ... Odd the way this gel just shows up before ... You don’t think ... No, surely not?”
Her fingers clench into tight fists. Who do these people think they are? What do they think she is? They have not come to honour the dead, but to gossip, and to slander the living. She moves swiftly towards the French window to cool her hot cheeks.
On the other side of the window she sees a winding brick path leading to the far end of the garden, beyond which stretch the broad green acres of Hampstead Heath. For a brief moment, she hesitates. She is very hungry. But she is also very angry, and just at this moment, anger seems more important than food. Josephine casts a quick glance over her shoulder at the room full of strangers. Nobody is paying her the slightest attention. Nobody cares whether she is present or absent. So, she might as well be absent. She eases the French window open and slips quietly out.
****
The following morning finds Detective Inspector Leo Stride sitting at his desk in his office at the headquarters of the detective police, attempting to eat a late breakfast without dropping it on the report he is reading.
Paperwork. There is always paperwork. Lots and lots of it, and it all has to be read and signed off by him. At this rate, he’ll soon be spending more time catching up on paperwork than catching criminals.
There is a knock at the door. A young police constable enters.
“Beg pardon sir, but Detective Sergeant Cully says, could you come quick. There’s been an incident at Kensal Green cemetery.”
Stride feels his heart sink. The word ‘incident’ combined with the word ‘cemetery’ can only mean one thing: a body has been taken. Body-snatchers are pretty near the top of his list of vile scum.
Not only does the filthy nature of the crime revolt him, but there is then the ghastly business of having to inform some grieving family that their loved one’s remains have been dug up, and possibly sold for medical dissection.
If he had his way, Stride thinks darkly, he’d hang every bloody resurrectionist from the highest gallows in the land. He abandons breakfast and paperwork, reaches for his hat, and orders the young constable to whistle up a cab.
Alighting some time later at Kensal Green, Detective Inspector Stride passes through the ornate entrance of the cemetery. He follows the young constable along one of the wide gravel paths, reflecting gloomily that no matter how much you dress it up with trees and flowers beds and landscaping and fine fancy colonnades, a cemetery is not a public park; it is a place to bury the dead.
Stride’s sensation of gloom is compounded by the thin mist hanging in the cold damp air, and smell of rotting vegetation, plus the knowledge of what he is probably about to see as he turns a corner, and spots Detective Sergeant Jack Cully standing at the head of an opened grave, surrounded by piles of newly-dug earth.
A group of four constables loiter nearby, smoking. Stride nods them a greeting, then joins his colleague. He looks down into the grave. The coffin is empty, its lid askew.
“Apparently it happened last night,” Cully tells him.
“Found any evidence?”
“Footprints.”
“A man’s or a woman’s?”
Cully looks at him strangely for an instant, then lowers his voice.
“It looks like the footprints of a gigantic hound,” he murmurs.
He conducts Stride over to one of the piles of earth, and points down.
“See. Quite clear. Must’ve rained in the night.”
Stride stares at the footprints in silence. They are exactly as Cully has described them. He reminds himself that detection work involves logic and rationality, and that what he is looking at now does not come into either category. He waves a dismissive hand.
“This is the nineteenth century, Jack. Not some fictional dark age.”
“So, what are these then?”
“I don’t know. But I do know gigantic animals are the stuff of fairy tales.”
“How about those gigantic black pigs that live in the Hampstead sewers?” suggests one of the constables. “I read about them in the newspaper. Running wild all over Highgate, they say. People get woken up by their fearsome grunting.”
Stride glares at him.
“As I said, there is a completely ordinary explanation for this.”
“One of my neighbours grew a gigantic marrow once,” another constable remarks innocently.
Stride decides to ignore them all, and strike out for reality.
“Two of you nip round to the medical schools. Ask to see the dissecting rooms. Don't take no for an answer. The rest of you round up the usual suspects. By the bye, do we know the name of the deceased?”
Cully tells him.
Stride breathes in sharply.
“In that case, nobody – I repeat, nobody – is to talk to the newspapers. Do I make myself quite clear?”
****
As Stride's men begin their frantic search of the medical establishments, Mr Septimus Able, of Willing and Able, Solicitors, of Gray’s Inn Square, is awaiting his first client of the day. Mr Able is an elderly grizzle-haired man, dressed in good black, with a high white cravat. His lean face is parchment-coloured, with skin as dry as the legal tomes that line the walls of his office.
His steely-grey eyes survey the world from under deeply-hooded lids. He resembles one of the birds of prey at the Zoological Gardens, an impression reinforced by his beak-shaped nose and claw-like bony fingers.
Of his client, who is even now approaching the door of his chambers, he knows very little. Not that he knows much of any of his clients, in the personal or societal sense. Of their financial and legal business – that is quite another matter, of course. Of that, he is intimate with every last deta
il.
He hears a knocker sound in the street, followed by the familiar tread of his legal clerk in the outer office, and pulls a sheaf of documents towards him. Under the desk, his boots creak gently. The clock on the wall ticks. Steepling his fingers, he sits and waits.
Over the years, Mr Septimus Able has observed many individuals, young and old, male and female, sitting in the brown leather chair that is placed directly in front of his desk. He has witnessed their varying reactions as he reads the Last Will and Testament of their recently-deceased relatives, and they hear the news (good or bad) about the provisions made for their future. Now here he is again. And here, if he is not very much mistaken, is his client.
The door is opened by his legal clerk, who ushers in a young woman dressed in elegant mourning garb. Mr Able observes the straight set of her shoulders, the upright carriage of her head, the halo of bright red hair barely contained by the sombre crêpe bonnet.
He wonders what she is thinking as she advances towards him. He doubts that she has any idea that her life (which, in his limited knowledge of young women, has probably been pretty uneventful) is about to change beyond all recognition.
“Miss King?”
He rises, extending the hooked fingers of his claw-like hand.
Her black-gloved handshake is firm. He approves it. He indicates the vacant leather chair. She sits down gracefully. He notices that her back does not touch the chair.
“I am your late uncle’s solicitor and his executor. I have here his final wishes, as set down in his latest Will. With your permission, I shall proceed to read them to you.”
Mr Able clears his throat, and begins to read in a businesslike voice. It is not a long document. When he has finished reading, he glances up. The young woman is giving him a steady, clear look. Her hands are tightly-clasped.
“Is there anything you wish to ask me?”
An imperceptible shake of the head.
“Then I shall arrange for a regular sum of money to be supplied to you from your inheritance. I shall arrange to pay the other legatees, as per your uncle’s instructions.
“As I am appointed your legal guardian, I shall also arrange for the interest from the stocks and shares you have been left, and the profits from your late uncle’s business to be paid into a bank account in your name, which I will open. The money will be held in trust until you come of age. It will provide you with a tidy sum of money. A very tidy sum indeed.
“You are of course, quite free to make whatever arrangements you wish in the future. Until you indicate otherwise, I shall act for you, and in your best interests. If you choose to sell your late uncle’s business, I shall be happy to act upon your instructions, if, and when you should reach that decision.”
He shuffles the papers on his desk. Pauses. Clears his throat once more.
“'There is one final clause. It relates to certain items brought back by your uncle from his travels abroad, namely, a small collection of precious stones, which I believe were given to him by someone he met out there. The collection consists of five emeralds, two balas rubies, four amethysts, and a large diamond known as the Eye of the Khan.”
His voice is monotonous, as if he is reading a laundry list. He is aware that stones like these create a deadliness in humanity, a morality whereby they are valued above life. But to him the stones are just fragments of rock and carbon. The avidity and violence they inspire is as much of a mystery as their beauty.
“The two rubies,” Mr Able reads on, “are to be handed to a Mrs Lilith Marks, of 3 Endell Terrace, Maida Vale, as a gift.”
The client makes a sudden alert movement of her head. Almost as if she has heard the name before. Surely not, he thinks. She is young and very innocent. Lilith Marks and her gay sisterhood would be utterly beyond her limited knowledge of the world.
“The rest of the collection is yours to keep, or dispose of, as you please,” he continues. “I believe that your uncle, for reasons of his own, kept the jewels in his safe. But I would strongly advise you, particularly as the diamond is of high price, if not priceless, that they should be deposited as soon as possible in a banker's or a jeweller's strong-room. I can arrange for the two rubies to be delivered to the named recipient, if you would care to have them conveyed to my office.”
He puts down the Will.
His client says nothing. She does not move.
Tick, tock. Creak, creak.
“Do you have any further questions?”
A slight shake of the head.
He steals a glance at the clock. His next client is due at any minute. An important City man, coming to consult him on important City business. He does not wish to keep him waiting. He rises.
“Then allow me to bid you a very good-day, Miss King. My clerk will show you out.”
Josephine quits the lawyer's chambers. It has started raining, but she is barely conscious of the water draggling the hem of her black dress and seeping into her boots. A cart has overturned in the street, and she is forced to pick her way between hoof-smashed cabbages and upside-down crates of hysterical chickens. She does not notice.
My allowance. My bank account. My diamond, she thinks. My life. She has always felt in want of a life. Now that she has found her status elevated to that of a single young woman in possession of a good fortune, it looks as if she is finally going to have one. Or at least, she will, once she manages to open her uncle’s safe. She walks on. The streets glitter. If she half-closes her eyes, she sees diamonds.
****
Sally’s Chop House is a dark, low-ceilinged place off Fleet Street. Customers sit either at long tables or in booths to eat their meal. Sawdust on the floor is patterned by the tread of boots. A massive man in dark sleeves and a gravy-stained apron carries big plates of steaming food from table to table.
The massive man (in reality, he is the eponymous Sally), has shoulders broad as a barrel. His nose has been broken so many times it has developed an elbow. The air is hot and steamy, and smells of smoke, greasy cooked meat and cabbage, with a side order of drains.
Detective Inspector Stride is sitting on his own in one of the back booths. He always sits on his own, as he exudes an invisible aura of policeman. He is loitering over a plate of mutton chops and potato, washed down with a half-pint of porter. Spread out on the table in front of him is a copy of a newspaper.
The massive man appears at his elbow.
“Everything to your satisfaction, Mr Stride, sir? Only you don’t seem to be enjoying your food like wot you usually does?”
He gives Stride a wide disingenuous smile. It is a smile that hints that here is someone who would never ever stab you in the back, though they might possibly tell someone else where the knives are kept.
Stride waves him away without replying. He stares gloomily down at the front page headline of The Standard which announces in big black letters:
FEROCIOUS GRAVE-ROBBING MONSTER HOUND STALKS KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY!
How did this happen? After all his careful instructions?
He reads on in disbelief. Hell and Damnation – if this story has come from one of his own men, that man should be punished not just for disobeying orders, but for having a mind bordering on the criminally insane.
Why, Stride muses, does the imagination keep peopling the dank city with terrible apparitions? Giant black pigs, the Twickenham vampire, rats that come out of the sewers at night and steal children from their cribs, beggars who grow fish-scales on their skin.
Then he remembers the huge distinctive paw-prints in the mud. Is it worse knowing that Nature might have done an even better job? His appetite suddenly deserting him, Detective Inspector Stride pushes his plate away.
Right now, he’d rather be somewhere else, but he has an unpleasant duty to perform. One that he has been putting off all day, but cannot put off any longer. He sighs and checks his pocket watch. Reminding himself that the somewhere else will involve paperwork and shouting at people, he sets off to round up Jack Cully.
**
**
Mid-afternoon finds Josephine sitting at her uncle’s desk in the book-lined study, a pile of correspondence in front of her. There are letters of condolence to be read. There are cards of inquiry, with the words: To inquire written on the top, that have to be replied to by cards with: Thanks for kind inquiries.
Thankfully nobody is calling round, because mourning etiquette dictates that one does not intrude until such time as the mourner decides they are ready to re-enter society. All this she has learned from Mrs Thorpe, who has called round, to make sure that the post-funeral arrangements are being carried out to her satisfaction.
However, Josephine is not dealing with the voluminous correspondence. Instead she is sitting, chin in hands, staring into the middle distance. She has other things upon her mind. She is following yet again the train of events that unfolded from the moment she left the lawyer’s chambers.
She remembers rushing up the dusty stone stairs of King & Co, running into the outer office and stammering out the story of the jewels to an astonished Trafalgar Moggs. Then she recalls the heart-stopping moment of taking her uncle’s key from Moggs’s hand, entering her uncle’s private office and breathlessly unlocking his safe. And discovering that it was totally empty.
****
Meanwhile back in his office at Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Stride and his colleague are reading copies of the early evening papers. Every one carries some front-page variant of the: FEARFUL MONSTER CORPSE-EATING HOUND STRIKES TERROR IN HEARTS OF LAW ABIDING CITIZENS headline. Over the course of the day, the story has grown legs and run round the entire city.
“Bit of a nightmare,” remarks Detective Sergeant Jack Cully, in his role as master of the understatement. “I gather from the lads it was one of the gravediggers who tipped off the press.”