“Gladly, madam. As a matter of fact, I wanted to say the same.”
No sooner had Nancy climbed up the area steps than Elizabeth came bustling up the main stairs, but when she saw Bella’s clothes laid ready on the bed for packing, she threw up her hands in dismay. “Whatever are you doing, madam?”
“I’m leaving this house directly.” Bella’s voice trembled. “You must help me, Elizabeth. Mr. Manningham declares that he is calling in that terrible doctor and a consultant. You know what that means. I dare say he has been working on you.”
The cook nodded.
“I am not mad, Elizabeth. I may be awkward, difficult and frail, but not mad! Though God knows, the way he has behaved and is behaving would drive a weaker woman out of her mind. And now he’s won that Nancy over. After all I did for her! Have you noticed how that child has changed?”
Elizabeth was doubly distressed, unable to see how she could help her mistress and Bert Booker’s employer, whom she had promised to assist after visiting him. “Where will you go, madam?”
“I have somewhere to go,” Bella said. “If you do not know where then Mr. Manningham cannot worm it out of you.” She went to the chimney mantel and tipped the red stones out of the vase. “What I lack is the money. There is a pawnshop in Westbourne Grove. These stones are pretty. They should advance you ten pounds on them. If not, take five. Will you go for me?”
Elizabeth refused to take the stones. “There is no call, madam. I have the money in my savings. Besides . . .” She did not finish because at that moment came the thump of the heavy knocker on the front door, a sound for which Elizabeth had been waiting.
“What is that? It cannot be Mr. Manningham returned?”
Bella slipped the stones into her purse.
“It’s the gentleman,” Elizabeth said, “what I wanted to talk to you about. I beg you, go down to the drawing room to receive him.”
“At such a time!” said Bella, “when every moment is precious! It is impossible.”
Elizabeth took her mistress’ hand. “But you must, madam,” she said. “From the way he spoke with me, I do believe he can help you, madam, more than ever what I can. He is a friend, a real friend.”
It was the word “friend” as much as Elizabeth’s earnestness that made Bella agree. As she tidied herself in her glass before descending, she thought “a real friend” was exactly what she wanted at this moment, someone as benevolent as Mrs. Jameson, but ready to take her side.
The gentleman was already waiting in the drawing room, looking down at Jack’s bureau, idly testing the drawers. With a shock, not of surprise but of pleasure, Bella recognized that the gentleman was not an utter stranger. She had seen him that first evening standing in the street outside, and later he had tried to speak to her outside Whiteley’s.
“Mrs. Manningham,” Elizabeth said, “This is Mr. Rough.”
The gentleman looked up. A short, sturdy figure, with grizzled hair, probably in his late sixties, he combined the vigor of a much younger man with an authority which was reassuring and a friendliness that could, Bella thought, be on occasion grimly firm. She was surprised that she could ever have regarded Mr. Rough as an alarming person. She turned to Elizabeth and nodded to indicate that she might leave. Then she went over to meet Mr. Rough, who shook her hand. “What may I do for you, Mr. Rough?”
“It is rather a question of what we can do for one another, Mrs. Manningham. I understand from Elizabeth that you intend to leave this house tonight.”
“I must!”
“A very wise decision, Mrs. Manningham, in the light of all you know at the moment. But in the light of what I know at the moment . . . Well, shall we sit down?”
“Have we the time?”
“I talk faster sitting down, Mrs. Manningham. You stand if you wish.”
“It is just that I am afraid, Mr. Rough.” Bella sat across the hearth from him. “So many things have happened in this house that I do not properly understand.”
“You speak even truer than you think, madam.” Mr. Rough looked around. “This room has not changed much in the last twenty years. Except the carpet, of course. Twenty years ago I suppose you wouldn’t recall a Mrs. Alice Barlow, in the late sixties. The Cabman’s Friend, they called her. Very eccentric, very rich. Wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do for cabbies or their horses.”
“I fail to see what this has to do with us, Mr. Rough.”
“Not if I told you that the last, indeed the only, time I saw the old lady, she was lying there.” He pointed to the floor between them. “A shade nearer my chair than yours, ma’am. Her throat was slit ear to ear.”
Bella was appalled. “Those noises upstairs! You would not have me think this house is haunted?”
“That I would not, Mrs. Manningham. Those noises were no spirit rappings, but that they were connected with the unsolved murder of Alice Barlow, I’d bet my last pound. And shall I tell you why?”
“Are you a policeman?” Bella asked. “Were you in charge of the case?”
“Not exactly either,” Mr. Rough said. “Before retirement I was Detective Sergeant Rough. A name no doubt unknown to you, ma’am, but respected, indeed feared, by the criminal fraternity. I was not the detective in charge of the Barlow case. If I had been, I can assure you, it would not have been dropped until it had been solved.”
“To murder a harmless old lady . . . What could be the motive?”
“Money, ma’am, or more specifically, the famous Barlow rubies which she inherited from her husband. You should have seen the upstairs. She slept on that top floor, had all the servants rooms knocked into a big sort of attic-studio-bedroom: she was eccentric, like I said. And this place, like a shambles it was, chairs ripped up, feathers all over the place, furniture smashed. It was where she kept the Barlow rubies, see; it was an open secret. That’s where the murderer went after he slit the old lady’s throat; up top to get the rubies.”
“And he got them?”
“That’s what my superior officer, Sergeant Allinson, believed, or rather said he believed. He said the job was done by Smith, The Slasher, who, you may remember, swung a couple of years later for the Trowbridge Diamond Murder. The Slasher was a pro; took his swag to a fence to be re-cut. And that’s what Allinson said was done with the Barlow rubies. He never got The Slasher to confess, but the story allayed the public outcry and saved Sergeant Allinson’s face.”
“And you believe the murderer never found the rubies?”
“Sure of it,” Mr. Rough said, “and he wasn’t a pro like The Slasher. You could see from the way the place was smashed up. Lost his head. You can imagine him searching all night, getting wilder and wilder, knowing there was a deaf old servant down in the basement who’d be getting up as soon as it was light. I don’t think he wanted to do the maid, too. The old lady must have shaken him.”
Mrs. Manningham leaned forward in her chair, for the moment oblivious of the passage of time, which brought her husband’s return nearer. “Do you know who . . . who this amateur murderer was, Mr. Rough?”
“I’d bet a pound to a penny,” Mr. Rough said, “that it was a young party named Sydney Power. Sydney Power was a personable young man, distant cousin of the old lady, very plausible. He used to help her administer her charities. Secretary of the Cabmen’s Shelter Endowment Trust, I remember he was. I did some investigation of him; and a tricky bit of work I found him. Very fond of the ladies, and very successful. But there were things, at which he was not so successful. In fact at the time of the old lady’s death, he was up to the eyes and over in debt, and he had a motive, too. He inherited £10,000 under the old lady’s will. But he had a cast-iron alibi. He’d spent the night in the bed of a fancy lady in Half Moon Street, as she swore and so did her maid, who slept in the sitting room outside.”
“If that was his motive, why should he want to steal the rubies?” Bella asked. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
Mr. Rough laughed. “You have a detective mind, ma’am. Or a mind like S
ergeant Allinson’s; because that’s what he said. But it occurred to me that young Sydney Power was one of these clever fellows who likes to have things all ways. By stealing the rubies he would draw suspicion away from himself as a legatee. As it was, he benefited to the tune of a further £3,000, his share of the £12,000 which the insurance company had to fork out when the rubies could not be found.”
“And what happened to Mr. Power? Where is he now?”
“That is the question, ma’am; or rather two questions, of which I can only answer the first. The year after the old lady’s murder, Sydney Power emigrated to Australia. I had an eye kept on him. On the boat going out, he announced that he was hoping to strike gold. And so he did, in a manner of speaking; but not by pick and shovel. In 1871 he married a Mrs. Dusty Hogg, the widow of an ex-convict, who had struck it rich in the Ballarat Gold Rush. She had, I understand, in her maiden days been a fan dancer. Some four years later Mr. Power disappeared, taking with him some of his wife’s fortune, but not sufficient to induce her to prefer charges. According to my report, she said, ‘To be rid of that rogue, I’d have paid twice as much.’ And from that moment Sydney Power may be said to have vanished from the face of the earth; certainly from my records.”
Bella looked at her watch, “Mr. Rough, my husband . . .”
But with the imperturbability of the old, Mr. Rough was not to be hurried. “Now to your second question, ma’am. I have by training and by nature a good memory not merely for faces, which change with time and can be disguised by the growth of beard and mustache, but also for mannerisms, bearing—what I might call ‘the stamp of personality.’ The ‘stamp’ does not change, Mrs. Manningham, any more than the Queen’s head upon a coin may change. It can be worn away, perhaps finally almost obliterated, but it does not change.”
“Mr. Rough,” Bella said. “Please come to your point.”
“As you know, ma’am,” Mr. Rough continued, “I live in the neighborhood, close by. Well, one day some months ago, I was taking my constitutional, when I noticed in front of me a man whose bearing was familiar. He was not a Bayswater inhabitant, whom, of course, I would have recognized immediately from behind, but someone whom I was sure I had met.
“I followed him down Westbourne Grove. Even in retirement, one retains one’s professional curiosity.”
Bella could not contain her impatience. It was approaching dusk. The old man might go on all night.
“Finally what did he do but turn into Angel Street. He walked up the steps of this very house . . .”
Bella knew what the old man was leading up to, but she could not bear to cut him short. She went over to the window. The gaslamps had been lit; but there was a group of children still playing hopscotch on the pavement opposite.
“As I walked past without so much as batting an eyelid,” Mr. Rough continued, “I said to myself, ‘In the name of all that’s unholy, it’s Sydney Power!’ ” He looked at Mrs. Manningham’s unresponsive back. “Did you hear me, ma’am?”
Mrs. Manningham turned. “God help you, Mr. Rough!” Her voice trembled. “Whoever my husband really is, he’s coming down the street!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mr. Rough heaved himself from his chair. “I’ll go down the basement stairs. You, ma’am, to your room and lock the door.”
“There’s no key” she snapped, “and my clothes are all ready for packing.” She fumbled in her purse. “This is your doing, Mr. Rough. There’re some stones in this purse. For pity’s sake, pawn them and give the money to Elizabeth for me. While she’s here, he will not dare do much. And pray God, he’ll go out again later.”
She opened the door of the drawing room and went to the head of the stairs. It was too late. Manningham had come in and was depositing his gloves in the hall-stand drawer.
Mr. Rough stood behind her. He pointed questioningly up the stairs.
Bella shook her head and opened the door of her husband’s bedroom. She made a sign for Rough to hide there and slip out later.
He tiptoed into the bedroom and she closed the door. She could hear the clatter of Jack’s cane in the umbrella stand.
The drawing room behind her was in improbable darkness. She must prevent him going immediately up to her bedroom and discovering her preparation for departure. She went quickly to light the gas. Too quickly. Her bustle caught the projection of a bamboo whatnot and brought it crashing with its load of bric-à-brac.
From below came a bellow from Jack. “What in the name of God?”
Bella fumbled for the ring which dangled at the end of a chain attached to the gas bracket and pulled it down. The mantel sprang to life, lit by the pilot. It was too high. But there was no time to adjust it. She ran to pull the curtains.
She could hear Jack mounting the stairs.
Where Mr. Rough had been sitting, there remained the depression of the cushions. She plumped them up wildly.
“Jack,” she called. “Jack, here!”
“One moment!” he said, irritably. “I must get . . .”
He was going into his bedroom, the door already half-open.
“No, now! Jack, please!” She crouched down over the scattered bric-à-brac. “It’s urgent!”
He came impatiently to the doorway of the drawing room, standing with his hand on the knob, but still in full sight of the bedroom doorway.
Bella tried desperately to think of some excuse which would bring him and keep him inside the drawing room long enough for Mr. Rough to escape. “You must see for yourself, now!” she said, hysterically. “I insist!”
He came in and stood towering over her.
“I did it!” She cried. “I did it! I did it!” She was laughing, half hysterically, half triumphantly at the thought that she had drawn Jack into the room to cover Mr. Rough’s escape. “Don’t you see, Jack?” She grasped his trousers to prevent his leaving.
“Did what?” he thundered.
“I knocked it over,” she said. “I broke all these things. I admit it.”
“That is self-evident,” he said. “But scarcely a matter for self-congratulation.”
“But don’t you understand, Jack?” she said wildly. “You are always accusing me of doing things to which I don’t admit.” By this time Mr. Rough must be going down the basement stairs. Pray God he would have the sense in going out not to cross the road but to hug the nearside railings out of view. She picked up the two halves of a cheap china ornament. It was three squatting monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. “Perhaps it could be glued.”
There was a loud crack. The flaring gas mantel had broken the glass globe.
“And I suppose you will admit responsibility for that too. You know that the pressure must be regulated.”
“Yes,” she said, gathering up the pieces of bric-à-brac. “That was my fault also.”
Jack went over, lowered the gas and lighted the other bracket, then waited with his back to the fireplace, riding on the balls of his foot until Bella finished.
“When you have stopped groveling on the floor,” he said, “I have a question to ask you, my girl.”
Bella continued to grovel. She hated this man, whoever he was, Manningham or Power, but it was not in her nature to betray him. For seven years he had been a husband to her, if more for worse than better, even a bigamous husband. If only she could get away, let him take his own chance with Mr. Rough and his Furies. But she had first to get him out of the house. The one way to secure Jack’s going out would be to beg him to stay, but that had to sound convincing.
“Stand up, my girl,” Jack said, “before my patience is utterly exhausted.”
She set the bamboo whatnot upright and stood up. The devil in all his wrath could not have been more fearsome than the bearded figure at the fireplace.
“When I crossed the street on my way in,” he said, “I looked up, naturally expecting a light in your bedroom windows. But there were no lights anywhere. Yet when I come up the stairs, there is one gas flaring, a whatnot overturned, the
curtains hastily drawn. What, may I ask, precisely what were you doing, nosing down here in the dark?”
“Nothing!” she said.
“I see. You were doing ‘nothing’ in the dark?” He nodded. Then he shot an accusing finger at her. “What sort of ‘nothing’?”
“Well, I can’t . . .” Her inventive power failed her. “I can’t really say.”
“Do you know why I came back, my girl?”
“Because you had a mind to, I imagine.”
“I came back because I had left my ring of bureau keys on my chest of drawers. And I had a presentiment that there was method in your madness.” He looked towards his bureau.
Bella turned her gaze there too and a blush flamed her cheeks and throat. The ring of keys hung from the lock of the bureau top. “That has nothing to do with me!” she cried.
“We shall see whether my presentiment was correct,” Mr. Manningham said. “If I understand my wife’s crazy logic, she thought that if she hid the cameo brooch in my bureau then of course the responsibility couldn’t be hers.”
“It is not true,” she said. “This is merely another of your diabolical tricks.”
“Please open the bureau top. We shall see.”
She clasped her hands behind her back. “I have never opened your bureau and I shall not do so now.”
“Bella is behaving like a naughty little girl,” Mr. Manningham observed. “Naughty little girls have to be punished until they do what they are told.” He had raised his forearms level with his shoulders and was opening and closing his powerful fists, as a sort of limbering exercise. A hideous smile of growing pleasure spread across his face.
She unlocked and opened the top of the bureau.
He came behind her and she was ready for some sudden, savage attack. But all he did was to take out the brooch and give it to her. Then he locked the bureau and replaced the keys in his pocket. “That was too childish, my girl,” he said pityingly. “Now you go upstairs and I will bring you up your medicine.”
“I do not choose to go upstairs. And it is not time for that medicine. ‘After meals.’ That is what it has on the bottle, as you have reminded me.”
Gaslight Page 16