‘If we could wait here, what?’ Sidney Grice resisted her attempts to relieve him of his cane.
And the maid bobbed in confusion. ‘I am sure I don’t know, sir.’
‘I am partially mollified to learn that you are sure of something, if only your ignorance.’ He shooed her off with the back of his hand. ‘Go.’
The maid bobbed. ‘Yes, sir.’ And she scurried away.
We watched her go down the hall and turn right.
It was a pretty entrance, I thought, periwinkle wallpaper and a marble floor veined in a hint of pink, and the stairs had a cheerful rose runner.
Sidney Grice swallowed noisily.
‘Assistant?’ I turned on my guardian. ‘I have a name.’
‘So does your cat,’ he replied, and I was about to respond that he actually used hers, when a voice came from inside the room.
‘I will deal with this, thank you, Aellen.’
The maid came out and turned back up the hall, and Freddy appeared in a dark blue dress with darker blue trim, and walked straight towards us. Her movements were graceful and, with her slender figure, she could have been a striking woman were it not for her injuries. Her face was as scarred as I remembered and, without her hat, I saw that she had short, sparse, straw-yellow hair.
‘It is good to see you, March.’ She took my hand briefly. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grice. I have read so much about you.’
‘How much is so much?’ My guardian stood on tiptoe to peer over her shoulder.
‘A great deal.’ Freddy looked edgily behind herself but there was nobody there.
The famous detective showed no interest in furthering that conversation, but appeared to have taken an avid one in Freddy Wilde’s bosom, bowing until his long thin nose seemed about to be buried in it. Freddy leaned back, uncomfortably, but his crooked finger came up and tapped something metallic.
‘That is an unusual amulet.’ He straightened and I glimpsed an ornamented silver cylinder inset with a few bright rubies hanging from her neck. ‘What does it contain?’
‘Perfume.’
‘Then please do not allow the aroma to escape.’ Sidney Grice clasped his hands in supplication. ‘It may make the webs of my toes tingle and I have little appetite for that experience.’
‘It was my mother’s.’ Freddy fingered the chain. ‘From Turkey, I believe.’
‘Persia,’ he corrected her. ‘Safavid dynasty from the Herat region. The filigree style is unmistakeable to the tutored eye.’
Freddy looked impressed. ‘March told me that your powers are quite miraculous.’
Mr G examined himself in the ornately gold-framed mirror. ‘My senses are extraordinarily acute.’ He removed a minuscule smut of soot from his nose. ‘And my intellect without parallel. But I leave miracles to the Bible, shabby conjurors, shabbier politicians and miracle workers.’
‘Very well.’ Freddy stepped forward into the weak rays coming through the fanlight. ‘How did I get this face?’
My guardian surveyed her briefly and expressionlessly.
‘It is the face with which you were born,’ He drew out a red paisley handkerchief. ‘That it was hideously disfigured by fire is obvious.’
Freddy winced at his choice of words and tipped her head back. ‘Go on.’
Sidney Grice shone the lenses of his pince-nez but did not clip them on. ‘Not quite so obvious to lesser beings, perhaps, are the twin facts that you were unconscious while the heat wreaked most of its havoc and that you must have been about twelve years old.’
Freddy looked at him suspiciously. ‘You have prior knowledge.’
‘I have not.’ He straightened the cuffs of his coat. ‘That you were unconscious is witnessed by the conditions of your hands, eyes and lips.’
Freddy touched her cheek. ‘How so?’
Mr G licked a finger to arrange his eyebrows.
‘When a conscious person is caught in a fire they do one or both of two things. They try to beat out the flames, burning the palms of their hands and/or they cover their faces, so that the back of their hands takes the brunt of the damage. The skin on your hands is as unblemished as that of your face must once have been. That your eyelids were closed is demonstrated by the degree of damage that they suffered whilst your eyeballs -bar a wisp of scarring in the left cornea – are relatively unscathed.’
Freddy’s eyes glistened. ‘Go on,’ she said unsteadily.
‘The epidermis was seared off most of your face, including your lips, except for those areas on the lower.’ I looked and saw that he was right. Between the scars and raw areas were several straight-edged patches of clear vermilion border and small areas of undamaged skin for about an eighth of an inch below, the two middle marks being almost rectangular.
‘And so?’
‘Your upper teeth are proclined some thirty to thirty-five degrees from what is considered aesthetically pleasing by those of a more trivial disposition than mine, and you have a tendency to slip your lower lip behind them. They protected those covered parts from the full effects of the fire. Teeth are remarkably resistant to heat, as witnessed by many a murderer’s attempts to incinerate his or her victim’s corpse. If you had been awake during the conflagration your mouth would not have been relaxed. You would have been calling for help or screaming, with your mouth wide open.’
‘And my age?’ Freddy asked quietly.
‘The patch in the left corner is almost twice the width and length of the right,’ Mr G put his handkerchief away. ‘The left was clearly a permanent tooth and the right a deciduous. As a rule the permanent dentition of girls develops before that of boys, especially wealthy girls – which you undoubtedly were from your unfeigned accent – and the permanent canines erupt between the ages of eleven and thirteen. You were in a transition stage – hence I estimated that you were approximately twelve years old.’
Freddy touched her left jaw with the tips of her fingers. ‘It was my thirteenth Christmas and my parents had lit the candles on the tree. They left them burning. I do not know why. My mother and father were killed, along with Lucy’s brother and our two maids.’ She swallowed. ‘People tell me I was lucky.’
I took her hand. ‘How cruel life is.’
Freddy wiped her eyes. ‘Your ward did not exaggerate your powers, Mr Grice.’
My guardian ran a hand through his thick black hair. ‘Perhaps I can put them to profitable use now – if you have finished your amble down memory lane.’ Freddy gasped and I rounded on him.
‘You could teach life a trick or two when it comes to callousness.’
But Freddy stopped me. ‘I am sorry to waste your time, Mr Grice.’ She blew her nose and composed herself. ‘Lucy must be wondering what we are up to. I have left her in the fernery.’
‘What terrors are contained within that final word,’ Mr G mumbled.
We passed through a nice duck-egg blue drawing room into a vast conservatory that had been transformed into a miniature jungle. I had rarely seen such a profusion of ferns: mossy plants grew out of a tree trunk, which stopped just short of the lofty glass roof; two of the walls were made of boulders, creating cliffs – some twenty feet or more high – from which projected and hung larger plants; and freestanding bushes grew from peat beds round the sides and in the middle of the room.
‘Green.’ Mr G recoiled.
‘I see you are exercising your detective’s skills already,’ a voice said.
And we peered between the masses of vegetation to find Lucy Bocking, quite tiny and dressed in dusky pink, in a high-backed cane chair at the far end of the room, her feet on a wicker footstool.
‘Mr Grice does not like the colour,’ I told her, and parted some fronds to make my way down a limestone path towards her.
‘I loathe it.’ He followed reluctantly. ‘It is evocative of meadows and pastoral poetry.’ He shook her hand. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Bocking.’
‘Please call me Lucy.’ Her hair was pinned back by an ivory comb carved into an intricate latticework, but t
he front still fell into a fringe.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am known as a casual fellow, but I dislike familiarity with my clients.’
‘So I cannot call you Sidney?’ she teased.
She had a choker around her neck with a cream-coloured button at the front.
‘Even my mother never called me that.’
‘What did she call you then?’
‘The same as she does now.’ He raised a puzzled eyebrow. ‘Grice.’
Lucy’s mouth twitched. ‘So what did she call her husband?’
‘Why, Mr Grice, of course.’
He wiped his hand on a handkerchief monogrammed mysteriously with the initial Q, and I bent to kiss her cheek. ‘How are you, Lucy?’
‘I am well,’ she assured me, though clearly she was not. Her voice was still hoarse. Her cuts were scabbing and the bruises fractionally fading, but her right eye was still almost closed and her arms trembled when she held them up to me.
Sidney Grice and I sat in two bamboo chairs facing her, he with his satchel on his lap.
‘Given the unsavoury nature of your case, if I am to believe – as I do occasionally – what Miss Middleton has told me...’ he toyed with the strap buckle, ‘I shall be obliged to say things which you will find embarrassing and I deeply so.’ Mr G wrapped the strap loosely around his wrist. ‘So I shall commence with a medical enquiry.’ Was it the light or had he gone a tint of pink? He pulled the strap tight. ‘Does your right acetabular-femural joint hurt very much?’
‘My hip?’ Lucy half-smiled at his circumspection and half-frowned in puzzlement. ‘But how did you know?’
‘Your foot is turned forty-eight degrees medially, and the only joint capable of rotating axially that far in that direction, without dislocation or fracture, is in your pelvis.’ He pulled on the strap, taking his reluctant left hand for a walk. ‘If it were your knee or ankle you would be in traction.’
‘How do you know I was not born pigeon-toed?’ she challenged, as he loosened his leash.
‘Those bovine epidermal boots, though in keeping with modern stylistic fads, are not especially new. If you were in the habit of walking in such a manner, the soles would have been more unevenly abraded.’
‘Bravo.’ Lucy clapped like a little girl at a magic show. ‘And, in answer to your question, yes it does. I can hardly walk on it.’
‘Good.’
‘I am glad you think so.’
Sidney Grice slipped his hand out of the noose. ‘Are you literate, Miss Bocking?’
‘What?’ Lucy laughed uncertainly. ‘Yes, of course.’
And he thrust a blank postcard at her with a stumpy black pencil.
‘Then kindly write neatly – though not in block capitals for I am not in the mood to look at those today – the names of your solicitor, if you have one, accountant, if you have one, and doctor, of whom you must have at least one.’
Lucy took them from him. ‘Why do you need those details at this stage?’
‘I do not.’ Mr G laughed mirthlessly. ‘And I might never, but I have a sick fancy to see their names in your hand.’
Lucy took the items silently and began writing.
‘Shall I ring for coffee?’ Freddy asked from behind us.
‘Tea,’ he instructed.
‘I am not a servant,’ she muttered and tugged a rope just inside the sitting room.
‘What exactly are you?’ Sidney Grice challenged as she returned.
‘A companion.’ Freddy said quietly.
‘Freddy is my best friend, almost my sister,’ Lucy began, but Mr G silenced her with a raised hand.
‘One cannot almost be a sister,’ he corrected her. ‘Sorority is an absolute relationship between females, which has been created either by mutual genetic parentage or the legal process of adoption. To put it simply enough for you to comprehend, either one is a sister or one is not.’
‘Lucy means that we feel like sisters to each other,’ Freddy sought to explain, but my guardian shushed her also.
‘If I had required one I should have employed the services of a professional interpreter, but I am hopeful that Miss Bocking will manage to express her thoughts more articulately.’ Fie turned back to Lucy. ‘Have you finished writing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then pass the result of your labours to me.’
‘Have you ever heard of the word please?’ Lucy held the card out and he rose to take them back.
‘I have,’ he assured her gravely, ‘indeed. Pray resume your exordium.’
Lucy clicked her tongue. ‘Miss Wilde and I lived next door to each other as children. My parents were her godparents and her parents were mine. We played together and after the accident—’
‘I have told them all about that,’ Freddy broke in.
‘Not all,’ Mr G interjected. ‘Merely a synopsis.’
Lucy patted her arm. ‘Freddy came to live with us and has remained ever since, and now there are just the two of us.’ She laughed croakily. ‘And what a fine pair we make, me crippled and—’
‘Stop,’ Freddy hissed. ‘Your wounds will heal and one day you will walk as though nothing has happened.’
‘One wound will never heal,’ Lucy struggled to get up on her elbows and Freddy put an arm under her shoulders, ‘until I am avenged of the animal who did this to me.’
‘I take it you use the word animal metaphorically.’ Mr G hauled out his hunter by the chain. ‘I am not, exempli gratia, expected to search for a tortoise.’
‘Is that a joke?’ Freddy seemed ready to pounce through the fronds of bracken drooping between them from a terracotta amphora.
‘You may infer the answer from two pieces of evidence.’ My guardian’s face had a mysterious aura in the dappled light. ‘First, my demeanour and, second, the brief extract from my memoirs which I shall relate immediately.’ An umbra fell across his eyes. ‘I was approached five over two thousand days ago by a woman of good repute, who gave a lurid and graphic account of being molested by an escaped an-a-con-da. Her credibility was somewhat tarnished, however, by her description of what it did with its hands.’
Notwithstanding – or perhaps because of – the grave way Mr G delivered this information, the three of us burst out laughing.
‘Oh.’ Lucy put her hands protectively over her midriff. ‘I really should not do that with cracked ribs.’ She shifted in pain. ‘I mean a man, of course,’ she croaked. ‘He ruined me for life, Mr Grice, and I want my revenge.’
‘Vengeance,’ Sidney Grice ruminated. ‘I am not much interested in facilitating that, but the capture and punishment of criminals is something to which I devote every waking and many a sleeping moment of my life.’ His face shone with a zeal that is normally only seen in paintings of visionary saints. ‘Thank heavens,’ he cried. ‘I hear the clatter of bone china on a Japanese oak tea trolley with brass wheels approaching this miserable lair.’
10
Gretna Green and Garibaldi
A DIFFERENT AND YOUNGER maid brought the trolley, negotiating her way nervously along the meandering paved pathway through the undergrowth into the clearing. She had an anaemic face with the big, soft and timid eyes of a doe.
‘Miss Wilde will pour,’ Lucy told her, and the maid chirruped nervously as she left. ‘The other servants have been teasing Muriel that you have come to arrest her, Mr Grice.’
My guardian leaned over the pot, lifted the lid and sniffed. ‘I have little doubt she will end in penury with or without my help.’ He replaced the lid. ‘Any maid who serves morning tea in or after the first quarter of the post-meridian is either morally degenerate or a simpleton or both.’
‘I think we only stock one kind of tea,’ Lucy told him, and his cheek ticked twice.
‘The stuff of nightmares.’ He pulled his coat around him. ‘Would you care for a Garibaldi?’ Freddy held out a plate of golden glazed wafers of pastry filled with currants, and I took one.
‘I would prefer to be offered information.’ Mr G rattled his finge
rplates on the lid of his hunter watch but did not open it.
Lucy licked her lips nervously. ‘Perhaps I should start at the beginning.’
My guardian unclipped his satchel. ‘You will start where and when I instruct you to.’ He brought out a black cloth-bound notebook.
‘You are the rudest man I have ever met,’ Lucy complained and he smiled thinly.
‘More ill-mannered than the man you allege assaulted you?’
Lucy gasped. ‘Allege? How dare you?’
‘Once we become comfortable in each other’s presence, you will marvel at what I have the courage to say.’ Sidney Grice shook his pencil as if driving the mercury down a medical thermometer. ‘But let me ease you on to that halcyon path by informing you that I am obliged to consider the possibility that you may be a liar.’
Lucy battled to keep calm. ‘I did not get these injuries falling downstairs.’
‘Perhaps you paid somebody to assault you in order to implicate somebody else against whom you have a grudge or wish to blackmail.’
Again it was Freddy who flared in indignation. ‘If you live to be a hundred, and I hope you do not, you will not find anyone more honest than Lucy.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Why, she was so religious as a girl that she went to a convent for a year and nearly became a nun before the fire.’
‘Which?’ Sidney Grice rolled the pen close to his ear like a connoisseur appreciating a good cigar.
‘The one that destroyed Steep House, my parents’ home.’
Freddy gripped her own sleeves.
Mr G listened to his pencil intently.
‘Why was it called Steep House?’ I asked.
‘It was named after Mr Shorrow Steep,’ Freddy explained. ‘He built our house and Lucy’s parents’.’
‘He built Miss Bocking’s parents?’ Sidney Grice threw up his left hand like a schoolboy asking to be excused. ‘Surely you are being whimsical?’
‘I cannot think of anyone with whom I would be less likely to share a jest.’ Freddy touched her temple.
‘I can,’ he assured her, a folded knife appearing in his left hand.
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Page 4