Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘It is a different breed,’ Mr G muttered, flicking the last of his tea on to the floor and my dress.

  ‘Wottiz?’ The cabby hauled open his hatch.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ My guardian passed up three coins. ‘I only understand eight languages plus a smattering of American. I never troubled to learn Inarticulacy.’

  And Sidney Grice was rapping on his own front door before I had pushed my way out though the flaps.

  55

  The Cat, the Rats and the Clown

  SIDNEY GRICE LOOKED almost as tired as Molly, who dragged herself in, having climbed two steep flights of stairs from the kitchen to serve his breakfast from the dumb waiter behind him. His newspapers – usually ripped and strewn by the time I came down – lay untouched in two neat stacks on the floor, but he had compensated for that with dozens of balls of scrawled-on paper, scattered like giant hailstones over every surface.

  ‘What is fifty-five thousand, six hundred and ninety-three and four-sevenths divided by twelve thousand, six hundred and twenty-one and thirty-one thirty-thirds?’ he rapped.

  I sat at my end of the table and got out my journal.

  Molly pushed her hat sideways, spilling a ravel of red hair, whilst she considered the problem. ‘Even I aintn’t not got not quite enough fingers for that one,’ she decided.

  ‘I was not asking you.’

  Molly’s brow became a badly ploughed field. ‘But I dontn’t not think Splirit can do addings, sir.’ And Spirit, curled up on a chair next to him, opened one eye.

  ‘I think he was asking me, Molly,’ I said.

  Something moved under Molly’s tight uniform like a pack of rats, and I was reminded horribly of when I had been drugged and thought my cell wall was made of them, but I forced myself to concentrate. The thing wobbled up and down and squeaked and I – restraining my own squeak – realized that the writhing mass was Molly.

  ‘Why, Lord bless you, miss, Mr Grice wouldn’t not expect you to know something like that.’ She slapped her own thigh like she had seen a clown do every time he hilariously soaked his audience of terrified children with buckets of water.

  ‘About four,’ I reckoned.

  Molly checked her left hand carefully. ‘Oh, I’ve got more than that,’ she declared because, of course, she could have done the sum all along.

  ‘Be precise,’ my godfather demanded.

  ‘Four and a thumb,’ his maid told him, though nobody, other than my cat, was interested.

  Spirit plucked Molly’s sleeve while I considered the leftover numbers. ‘Approximately four and two fifths,’ I declared, and Mr G put his pen down like a particularly irascible schoolmaster who has reached the end of his tether.

  ‘My knowledge of history is not much better than that of an above-average Cambridge professor,’ he said, with unusual modesty. ‘But I cannot recall the date when it was decided that precise and approximate were interchangeable synonyms.’

  ‘Christmas Day is always a Thursday,’ Molly contributed helpfully.

  Spirit dabbed the apron string dangling over her head, while I scribbled furiously. ‘Four and thirteen thirty-thirds,’ I decided.

  ‘But the other is four and seventeen thirty-fifths.’ The headmaster glared accusingly.

  ‘I do not even know what the other is,’ I told him. ‘So that is hardly my fault.’

  ‘Oh, this is futile.’ He splotted ink over the tablecloth.

  ‘No, it aintn’t not,’ Molly whispered to my cat. ‘It’s a founting pen.’

  ‘If he were here with his mighty brains . . .’ Sidney Grice intoned, and I at once knew who was meant. ‘He could have solved all these equations in nineteen seconds,’ Mr G continued sadly, perhaps regretting that he had blown those brains all over a cage with his revolver. ‘Though I fear the calculation is of no use to me.’ He raised his face pathetically.

  ‘I assume you are trying to match the two bullets.’ I took a slice of something that was closer to bread than toast.

  My guardian retied his black eye patch. ‘I have made one hundred and fourteen measurements of each projectile.’ He whirred through the pages of a thick notebook. ‘But the trouble is – as even you might have anticipated – not only have they distorted, but they have distorted in different ways.’

  Spirit tugged and Molly’s apron came undone.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Sidney Grice covered his eyes from the expanse of black dress that greeted them. ‘Go away, woman, and get dressed.’

  He could not have been more shocked if Molly were dancing naked and singing the Vegetable Song.

  Molly cupped her hands on her cheeks. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said coyly, as if he had just proposed marriage.

  ‘Get out.’

  Molly grinned, revealing a recently acquired gap between her upper right central incisor and canine. ‘He called me woman,’ she exalted and skipped from the room, rattling the plates on the sideboard even from the staircase every time she landed.

  56

  Harriet and the Huntress

  I WENT TO Huntley Street and rang the bell three times in quick succession, the code for all members of the Artemis Club, as it had come to be known. It was named after the Greek goddess, huntress and protectress of women. The door was opened not by Violet, the proprietress, but by a tall slender woman aged about thirty. Her hair was long and black and hung freely – something that would have disgusted my guardian, for loose hair was indicative of loose morals as far as he was concerned. Despite prurient speculation, though, the society was run on lines more respectable than some clubs I had heard about for so-called gentlemen.

  ‘Violet is unwell,’ she told me. ‘And you are. . .?’

  ‘March,’ I said. When I first joined the club we all used false names, a practice that began when the police took an interest in the Artemis, but they had not troubled us for years now. Some wives still stuck to their aliases, though, terrified that their husbands might find out they were relaxing and even enjoying themselves. ‘I am a friend of Harriet’s.’

  The lady smiled brightly. ‘Oh yes, she has told us all about you – the famous lady detective. I hope you have not come to arrest us.’

  ‘The only crime that you have committed is allowing the gin to run out, Rosie.’ Harriet came out of the sitting room. ‘March! I thought I heard your voice.’ Harriet hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks and held me out at arm’s length. ‘You look lovely.’ She was the only person apart from George who told me that. ‘Amongst March’s investigations,’ she told Rosie, ‘she has come upon the elixir of youth. I swear she looks younger every time I see her. If this carries on, March, they will be sending you back to school.’

  ‘I wish you would sell me some,’ Rosie said plaintively.

  ‘Oh, you do not need it, Rosie.’ Harriet put a loose tress up behind my ear. ‘But I could do with a few gallons. When I see myself in the mirror these days my face looks like a washboard.’ She mimicked a scowl at our reaction. ‘It is not funny. My husband sharpens his pencils on it.’

  Rosie chuckled. ‘I will restock the cabinet.’

  Harriet and I went to the sitting room. It had seemed quite glamorous when I first arrived in London, but the chintz sofa was getting threadbare on the arms and the cushions were splitting now.

  ‘I hear that Vi has been dipping into our funds,’ Harriet whispered. ‘Apparently the accounts made no sense at all at the AGM, and she has absconded with this year’s membership fees.’

  ‘Then I am glad I have not paid mine yet,’ I said.

  ‘Do not tell Rosie, but Vi was so busy fiddling the books she did not notice that I have not coughed up for the last three years.’ Harriet sat close to me. ‘It is difficult enough getting money for train fares when Mr F makes me keep household accounts and goes through them every month.’

  I did not ask Harriet how life with her husband was, for I knew that he was hardly aware of her existence. Rosie returned with a fresh bottle of Bombay, put it on the table in front of us with two glasse
s, and left us alone.

  Harriet poured.

  ‘You are distracted,’ she observed as we clinked glasses.

  ‘I am sorry.’ I brought out my old cigarette case and we lit two Turkish. Harriet put on a white glove to protect her hand from staining but I never bothered.

  ‘When most girls are distracted it is love. I assume you are still estranged from your gorgeous policeman.’ Harriet puckered her lips to puff out a train of miniature clouds.

  ‘Well,’ I began cagily and Harriet sat up.

  ‘Oh, March.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘He has not? You have not?’

  ‘He has.’ I laughed. ‘And I have accepted.’

  ‘Oh, March.’ Harriet flung her arms round me. ‘Oh, March.’ She burst into tears. ‘But that is wonderful. When? How? Why? Well, I know why, but what made him change his mind? What did your guardian say? I bet he was livid.’

  ‘I have not told him yet.’ I pulled back to look my friend in the eye. ‘And this is our secret until then.’

  Harriet blew her nose and dabbed her cheeks and kissed me. ‘Is that why you are perturbed?’

  I shook my head and we drank for a while without speaking. Harriet was one of the few people I have ever met who knew how to use silence to draw me out. ‘I am worried about a case,’ I admitted at last.

  Harriet put her glass down and topped mine up. ‘A murder?’ No matter how she tried, Harriet lit up in anticipation of some gruesome details.

  ‘He has not killed anyone directly yet.’ I inhaled nervily. ‘But it may only be a matter of time. A man is attacking women – forcing himself upon them and beating them brutally.’ It sounded very clinical when I put it into words. ‘We think we know who he is but we have no proof. His victims never see him clearly enough to identify him.’

  ‘What did you mean by directly?’ Harriet took up her glass again. I sometimes wondered why she ever put it down.

  ‘One that we know of was driven to suicide and she was only seventeen.’

  ‘Have you no clues?’ Harriet asked. ‘Not even part of an insect?’

  I had told her once how the leg of a woodlouse had helped to solve a murder in Highgate.

  ‘Mr Grice has two lead balls that he wants to prove came from the same gun.’ I smiled wryly. ‘He got the first from a man’s head and the second by shooting my handbag. It passed straight through my cigarette case and hip flask.’

  ‘I noticed that you had a different case.’ Harriet clutched her own bag protectively. ‘But how can they help him?’

  I took a swig of gin. ‘The rifling and scratches in a barrel mark bullets when they are fired,’ I explained, ‘and he believes that the marks for every gun are unique. But the balls are too flattened to be able to match them.’

  ‘A pity they are not footballs,’ Harriet remarked. ‘Then he could pump them up like I have to do for the boys. Their father is much too busy for such a mundane task. Cricket may be his second religion but, when his sons want to play, yours truly is the one who gets roped in to keep wicket.’ She pulled a face. ‘And I am absolutely hopeless at it. I am just thinking what I wouldn’t do for a smoke when a lump of leather comes smashing into my head. It’s a blessing I have not lost any teeth – yet.’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, Harriet, I wish you could be here all the time.’ ‘So do I, March. But we must think of a plan.’

  ‘We?’

  Harriet pulled at her fingers one at a time, quite hard, as she did sometimes when she was concentrating. ‘If you cannot find any clues, then we must find a way to trap him,’ she decided at last.

  ‘We?’ I stubbed out my cigarette in a blue glass ashtray, though I had not finished it.

  ‘We caught your father’s murderer,’ Harriet remarked, though I needed no reminding of that night. She dabbed her cigarette out and her shadow on the wall swayed.

  ‘And we made good partners in Scarfield Manor,’ I reminisced with a shudder. ‘But I tried entrapment with one of the victim’s brothers in an opium den.’

  ‘Opium?’ For once I thought I might have shocked my friend, but Harriet’s expression was dreamy. ‘I have not had that since I sneaked out of a Mothers for the Empire meeting in Hull.’ She poured us both another gin. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The police did not like our methods and now her brother is missing.’

  ‘Killed?’ There was no twinkle in Harriet’s eye now.

  ‘We do not know but I fear so.’

  Harriet paused. ‘We shall have to think about this very carefully.’

  ‘If we were to set another trap,’ I said cautiously, ‘the man who commits these crimes always chooses a young pretty woman.’ I paused. ‘And neither of us fits into both those categories.’

  My friend pouted but knew better than to protest. She would have fitted the bill once, but I never could.

  ‘Come upstairs.’ Harriet jumped up so suddenly that I clunked the glass into my teeth. ‘It is about time that you met some of the other members.’

  57

  Dulcie and the Swine

  ‘LADY DULCET BROCKWOOD,’ Harriet explained as we went back into the hall. ‘Young and very pretty indeed.’

  ‘How young?’ I asked warily.

  ‘Eighteen, I think.’ Harriet mounted the stairs. ‘Unmarried, unengaged and very rich.’

  I followed as closely as our dresses allowed.

  ‘Then why has she not been snapped up?’ I wondered, for we both knew how the marriage market worked.

  ‘I believe Lady Brockwood refuses to be snapped,’ Harriet said. ‘She is determined to marry whom and when she pleases.’

  ‘I like the sound of her.’ We reached the top. ‘But would she be willing to help?’

  ‘When she was fourteen she disguised herself as a cabin boy and boarded a ship to see the world,’ Harriet told me. ‘They got as far as Trinidad before she was discovered and sent home.’

  ‘I am not sure,’ I said, ‘that we should be putting someone so young at such risk.’

  ‘Why not let her decide?’ my friend suggested. ‘She should still be here.’

  We went along the corridor to the boardroom at the end. Lady Dulcet Brockwood was playing stud poker and, to judge by the pile of coins at her side and the few that her three companions possessed, doing rather well.

  She rose from the table, tall and slim with long golden-blonde hair tied back in a simple chignon, her coral-pink dress pinched in for a waist I could have almost put my hands round, and I should have hated her but she had such a lovely welcoming smile and held out her hand and said, ‘March, I have been dying to meet you ever since Harriet told me of your adventures.’ Her fingers were long and held on to mine long after Harriet had introduced us.

  ‘I cannot equal your escapades at sea, Lady Brockwood,’ I said and she frowned.

  ‘Please call me Dulde.’ And she leaned forward to whisper in my ear. ‘I made all that up but don’t tell them.’ She pulled back and winked. ‘I was about to have a G and T. Will you join me?’

  ‘I shall forego the T,’ I said as she linked her arm through mine. ‘I had more than enough quinine in India.’

  ‘I think I have read all your accounts of your escapades with Mr Grice.’ Dulcie poured the four of us a drink.

  ‘He would not be happy to hear them called that,’ I told her.

  ‘From what you write, I wonder if he is ever happy at all.’

  ‘I could make him happy,’ Harriet said wistfully, never having met him.

  ‘You would eat him alive,’ Dulcie prophesied.

  I laughed. ‘I think you would find him indigestible, Harriet.’

  ‘Cheerio.’ Dulcie clinked my glass.

  ‘March and I are planning a little adventure,’ Harriet said and I listened warily, for this newcomer was not lacking in confidence but looked very young indeed.

  ‘I think I will call it a day while I still have enough for a cab home,’ one of the women at the table called out.

  And her companion stood up. ‘I have to get b
ack to the swine.’

  And only when she had shut the door behind her did I ask, ‘Does she mean her husband or does she keep pigs?’

  ‘Both,’ Dulcie told me and we laughed.

  58

  The Eye of the Dragon

  THERE WERE TWO other women at that poker game.

  Marjorie Kitchener was a sturdy, striking twenty-five-year-old who had been widowed six years ago when her husband committed suicide on their honeymoon. Despite -or, as Harriet whispered later, because of – this she was a jolly, outgoing woman with an athletic physique.

  And there was another girl I had not met before, called Sally – fresh-faced and petite, and looking even younger than Dulcie.

  ‘How old are you, Sally?’ I asked and she blushed. ‘I am twenty-two.’

  And before I could make a judgement, Dulcie said, ‘Do not be taken in by Sally’s diffident manner. I met her at fencing classes. She can out-parry any man and is as brave as a lion.’

  ‘And I can box,’ Sally assured me shyly.

  I laughed. ‘Where did you learn that?’

  ‘Three older brothers,’ she told me, ‘and a father who taught it at Harrow.’ She was so pink-faced and mouse-like that I found it difficult to believe Sally was not joking.

  ‘She can too,’ Marjorie vouched. ‘Tell them about that Covent Garden porter, Sally.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ Sally began timidly. ‘He insulted Marjorie and the beast would not apologize so I had to teach him a lesson.’

  ‘Hulking great brute and she knocked him out cold.’ Marjorie laughed.

  ‘Well, you would seem to be a very useful person to have in a fight,’ I conceded, ‘though I hope it does not come to fisticuffs.’

  ‘Oh, so do I,’ Sally assured me nervously. ‘If you do not think it showing off, I have one other skill.’ She unclipped her handbag. ‘Which picture did you say you did not like, Harry?’

  I had never heard my friend called that before.

  ‘The one of Baroness Worford.’ Harriet pointed to a portrait of a former lady president. ‘She was the dragon Saint George was lucky not to meet – terrified all the members into voting for her.’