‘He hanged himself.’
‘Why?’
‘Scott was a foolish American.’
‘Is there any other kind?’
Sidney Grice had scant respect for our lost colonies, but he continued to speak over me. ‘Who described himself as The American Daredevil. He specialized in flinging himself from great heights – masts of ships and, or so he claimed, that silly waste of water, the Niagara Falls. At noon on the eleventh day of January 1841 he leapt from a scaffolding stage at this point.’ He indicated as promised. ‘And got his neck entangled in a carelessly arranged noose. The crowd, assuming it was part of the act, watched him strangle to death before anybody realized. Bedlam stands to our left.’
Tiring of his role as excursion guide, my guardian spent the rest of the journey entertaining us both by calculating the occupation of anyone I chose to challenge him on.
‘Vitreous souvenir paperweight seller,’ he diagnosed of a man dragging a large suitcase, as we reached our destination.
I had never been to Clapham Common. Although only five or six miles away from Bloomsbury, the inconveniences of travel on the surface of London and the refusal of my guardian to travel – or allow me to travel – beneath it on the Underground railways meant that I would have needed a good reason to journey there.
Rose Cottage had no roses but plenty of thistles in its untended front garden, yet was a sweet-looking house with trellised windows and pink rendered walls. We went up the short brick path and Mr G rapped on the front door with the handle of his cane.
‘One moment,’ came from within, and Mr G sniffed. ‘How revoltingly fresh the air is here.’
‘I think it makes a pleasant change.’
‘I like to smell the engines of industry turning,’ he said. ‘How long can it take a man to button up his shirt?’
‘I am not even going to think about it,’ I decided. ‘How can you possibly know he is doing that?’
‘Because,’ my guardian crouched to roll an upturned beetle back on to its legs, ‘if you used your ears instead of bombarding mine with mindless wittering, you would have heard him saying Dash these fiddly shirt buttons.’
The beetle staggered an inch and toppled back over, waving feebly.
The door opened and an elderly man appeared, still struggling with the stud in his left cuff. He had a chalk-striped long coat on and a beautifully pinned grey cravat.
‘Alfred Fairbank?’ Sidney Grice demanded, in the tone of an arresting officer.
‘Yes?’ The man’s voice was weak but steady.
Mr G thrust a card at him. ‘Mr Sidney Grice, personal detective.’
The old man wired his spectacles around his ears and studied it. ‘Order of the Grand Cross,’ he read. ‘Are you some kind of a Catholic?’
‘I am not any kind of anything,’ my godfather said stiffly.
Alfred Fairbank turned the card over and Mr G whipped it away.
‘I have been expecting you,’ Mr Fairbank said.
‘It would have been a waste of one sheet of notepaper, one hundred and nineteen inches of Dr James Stark’s iron gall ink, one envelope, a dab of gum and an outrageously overpriced postage stamp, plus my time and that of my irritating though loyal maid, and all the energies of Her Majesty’s General Post Office and the lackeys employed therein, if you had not.’
The old man scratched his high-domed head. ‘Had not what, sir?’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Fairbank,’ I said. ‘I am Mr Grice’s assistant, Miss March Middleton. May we come in?’
Alfred Fairbank admitted us to a cosy sitting room with two threadbare chintz chairs by the hearth, and settled me into one.
‘Mr Grice does not mind standing,’ I lied, before the old man was forced to surrender his own seat.
The floor was herringbone brick and the walls distempered.
‘We shall not take tea,’ Mr G avowed, though none had been offered. ‘And – to save my invaluable and your worthless time – I shall break a habit which I have adhered to for nineteen years and commence my interrogation with a leading question.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You, Alfred Fairbank, were employed by Mr Frederick Wilde at Steep House, Abbey Road, were you not? And you may answer yes or no.’
‘For nineteen years, sir,’ Alfred Fairbank confirmed.
‘A more polysyllabic response than I beseeched you to grant me,’ my guardian said pleasantly, ‘though nineteen is an excellent number.’
‘Were you happy there?’ I asked. My seat cushion had virtually no stuffing on the right-hand side, pitching me at an awkward angle.
‘Very, miss,’ the old man said. ‘It was my first position as butler, though. Of course I had been in service for many years before that – and it was a bigger leap in responsibilities than I had anticipated. But Mr and Mrs Wilde were very patient with my early failings and Miss Freda was a delightful child.’
‘Did you know the Bockings?’ I shifted my weight in an attempt to sit up straight.
‘They were frequent visitors, miss,’ Alfred Fairbank recalled. His lips were pale and his skin blotched with colourless patches, like a watercolour that had been stored in the damp. ‘A more flamboyant couple than the Wildes, but always very pleasant. Miss Freda and Miss Lucy were great friends.’
‘What about Eric?’ I slid forward in the hope that the front edge might be more level, but it was not.
‘A charming young man.’ Alfred Fairbank smiled faintly. His lower eyelids sagged redly. ‘Devoted to his mother and sister, and I dare say he took a bit of a shine to Miss Freda, not that she paid any attention to that sort of thing. It was all very innocent.’
‘Are there degrees of innocence?’ Sidney Grice picked up a toby jug from the mantlepiece – a fat man in a red waistcoat and green tricolour hat.
‘Do you remember Jocinda Green, the maid who was sacked?’ I asked, and the reminiscent smile died instantly.
‘How could I forget?’ The old butler fumbled with his cuff. ‘Such a lovely girl and such a silly waste to kill herself like that. What on earth did she want all those things for anyway? She never even tried to sell them.’ The memory of it all clearly disturbed him still. ‘Mr Wilde said some girls are like magpies. They can’t stop themselves collecting things, but that dress would not even have fitted her.’
‘Did she often help with the laundry?’ I asked, and he scratched his jaw where he had missed a tuft when he shaved. ‘Every week, as I recall, and Muggy, one of our maids, would regularly help at New House. Neither family entertained on a grand scale as a rule, but if Mr and Mrs Bocking had a large reception I would go with our footman to assist.’
‘So the two households got on well?’ I twisted round and jammed my bustle against the arm of the chair to steady myself.
‘We even had a joint staff party the day after Boxing Day at New House to make it more lively, and because they had a ballroom built on at the back with space for a band.’
‘It is just as well I am standing or I might be nodding off.’ Mr G replaced the jug. ‘Tell me about the fire.’
Alfred Fairbank drew a shuddering breath. ‘A terrible night.’ He wiped his hand down the side of his face. ‘Terrible.’
‘As you have already remarked one sixth of a second previously.’ Mr G measured out the length of the floor – three long paces and one short. ‘Who discovered the fire?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘How?’ he called from the back of the room.
‘I smelled smoke.’
‘For the sake of brevity I shall amalgamate my next three questions. At what time? Where were you? And what did you do?’
‘It was shortly after midnight, sir. The Wildes kept regular hours and were usually in bed by ten thirty. I had just polished my boots – I have always liked to do my own – and was about to undress in my bedroom. I thought perhaps a log had reignited in the main siting room and rolled on to a hearthrug. It had happened once before when a maid swept the hearth and did not put the guard back properly. And so I went to
look.’
‘And found?’
‘The hall filled with smoke and the Christmas tree alight.’
‘And your actions were?’ The detective went down on to his hands and knees.
‘I shouted Fire! Fire! And I banged on the dinner gong. Then I ran out of the back door.’
‘May I ask why?’ I ventured.
‘You have just done so.’ Sidney Grice scratched at a stain on the floor with his middle fingerplate.
Fairbank’s left arm was twitching now like a frog’s leg being galvanized. ‘There was a pump out there and a bucket.’ He dug his fingertips into his cheek. The plates were gnawed. ‘I filled it and threw two loads on the tree but it was hopeless. I never knew a tree could burn so fiercely.’
‘So what did you do next?’ I enquired, as Mr G crawled towards the old butler in full view from the side.
‘I banged the gong again and shouted as loudly as I could, but the smoke was choking me. I covered my mouth and nose with my cravat.’ Alfred Fairbank touched the one he was wearing. ‘And ran upstairs to Miss Freda’s room.’
‘Oh.’ Sidney Grice reached the butler’s chair. ‘Why hers?’ Alfred Fairbank rubbed both his eyes. ‘I suppose—’
‘I hate suppositions. I bear the very word a grudge and wish it nothing but ill. It tastes of sour earth and smells like a donkey.’ My godfather rested his chin on the arm of the butler’s chair, like a dog hoping for a treat.
‘I suppose,’ Alfred Fairbank repeated in confusion, ‘that I thought she was the most vulnerable, being the youngest and a girl and the furthest from the others.’ He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But I banged on Mr and Mrs Wilde’s door and threw it open and shouted, on my way there.’
‘How strange you did not mention that before.’ The detective began to crawl backwards. ‘Especially as they were at opposite ends of the house.’
‘It was all very confusing.’ The old man trembled. ‘There was so much smoke and the flames were rising, You cannot imagine what it is like being in a burning house.’
‘I do not need to.’ Sidney Grice stood up jerkily. ‘For I have escaped eleven conflagrations.’
That made my two experiences seem meagre, I thought.
‘And what greeted your nebulous eyes when you reached Miss Wilde’s room?’ My guardian dusted his knees.
‘It was ablaze, sir.’ Alfred Fairbank shook. ‘Miss Wilde must have woken and tried to get to the landing but been overcome by the smoke. She was lying on the floor by her bed and that was already in flames. Her hair was on fire.’ The breath shuddered out of him. ‘I carried her out. The fumes were so thick by then that I could not even call out any more. I tried to hold my breath and when I reached the hallway again I saw young Eric climbing in through a broken window. I tried to stop him but he rushed past me. I got to the window and half climbed, half fell out on to the front terrace and passed out. When I came round I had been dragged clear by Miss Lucy. Mr Bocking was tending to Miss Freda. She had been dreadfully burned but, thank God, she was unconscious.’
‘And the others?’ I hardly dared ask.
‘Nobody else got out.’ The old butler buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
I half rose but Sidney Grice held out his arm to halt me. He walked backwards to the front door and called to the profile of the bent old man. ‘Oh, Alfred, Alfred, Alfred Fairbank, prematurely aged and comfortably superannuated butler, pretender to the title of Miss Freda Wilde’s rescuer, why. . .’ Without glancing down, he found the big iron key and turned it in the lock. ‘Why – and you shall not leave this quaint sitting room alive until you answer me truthfully – why,’ he slipped the key into his trouser pocket, ‘are you lying?’
61
The Tangled Earth
ALFRED FAIRBANK SAT up and his hands fell away, and there was no doubt that he had been crying.
‘I do not know what you mean, sir.’ He found a white handkerchief, dabbed his eyes and blew his nose.
‘The last time I collated my figures which, you might be inspired to learn, was Saturday the fifteenth day of April in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-two, I calculated that the proportion of people who have told me that they do not know what I mean when it transpires that they do – excluding, of course, waitresses and bank clerks who rarely know what anybody means – it was ninety-two point seven per centum. This is not an encouraging statistic for you, Alfred Maurice Fairbank, especially as it is patently clear that you know exactly what I mean.’ Sidney Grice was leaning in the doorway like a skirt-scanner assessing a parade of women on The Strand but his voice was fast and compelling.
‘Identify the injuries that you bear from your adventure.’
‘They have all long healed,’ Alfred Fairbank managed.
‘After you fought your way into, through and out of a conflagration which, if your account is to be believed – and who am I to doubt it? – tore through a one-hundred-and-twelve-foot-fronted mansion in a matter of minutes?’
‘I had many burns and blisters at the time,’ the old man said, ‘but, as I explained, I covered my face.’
‘The average house burns in the region of one thousand of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit’s elegantly though eccentrically calibrated degrees of temperature,’ Sidney Grice took on the drone of a bored professor lecturing equally bored undergraduates on the most boring part of their curriculum. ‘And yet you survived your ordeal without so much as one lonely scar?’
‘Mr Fairbank was mainly troubled by smoke,’ I argued, but Sidney Grice was not to be deflected from his course.
‘Unswayed by my assistant’s sapless logic, I shall put aside your breathtakingly absurd claims of incombustibility for the present and proceed to your pretence that Miss Wilde’s slumberous chamber was conflagrant. I shall not weary you with the fact that the inner surface of the outer wall of her room which now lies supine upon the tangled earth showed none of the twelve signs of scorching known to man, nor of the five additional signs with which I have acquainted myself.’
‘If you mean soot, sir, it would have been washed away years ago,’ Fairbank protested.
‘You are sharp, Alfred Maurice Job Fairbank,’ Mr G said with more admiration than he had greeted anything I had ever said. ‘Which is also not a point in your favour, for I might have put some errors in your statement as the result of stupidity or senescence, whereas any attempt to feign forgetfulness from henceforth will be met with a degree of scepticism you may find alien to the genial persona with which I have presented you thus far. Putting that evidence also towards the rear of my colossal brain, just starboard of but below my subparietal sulcus, I shall permit Miss Middleton to change the direction of this investigation.’
‘Invest . . .’ Fairbank’s voice collapsed in alarm.
‘Miss Wilde used to sleep with a doll on her window ledge, did she not, Mr Fairbank?’ I asked.
‘At an age when other children are more usefully employed in coalmines and factories,’ Sidney Grice observed.
‘Though you did neither,’ I remarked.
‘I was never other children,’ he said stiffly.
‘Cynthia.’ The old butler smiled in remembrance. ‘A pretty little thing, made in Germany, I think.’
Sidney Grice chewed his cheek. ‘You may wish to remember that morsel of truth, Miss Middleton, but I doubt you will find it brings you comfort in the cold twilight years of your spinster-hood.’
‘I found that doll, Mr Fairbank,’ I told him, not sure why it mattered.
‘Concussed by a conjugation of events – its descent being abruptly interrupted by the cold earth.’ Sidney Grice brought his right hand out of his pocket, held up the key and enclosed it in his fist. ‘And the section of wall that landed upon it had, in the succeeding years, offered Cynthia some protection from the elements.’
‘And what does that prove?’ Alfred Fairbank asked, with none of his former deference now.
‘The doll’s head was made from porcelain.’ Mr G opene
d his hand to show that it was empty. ‘And, as anyone will attest, who has accidentally – and who has not? – put their Ming or Tang vase into a furnace, porcelain at high temperatures chars or even melts. More to the point—’ My guardian nodded to me to continue.
‘She had real hair and a pretty dress on,’ I continued. ‘None of which showed any signs of damage by fire.’
Fairbank puffed. ‘Whatever Mr Grice may say about his numbers, I still have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Miss Freda’s room was not destroyed by fire.’ I calculated as I spoke. ‘It fell into the garden when the lower floors collapsed.’
‘Then how do you explain her burns?’ the old butler demanded, slapping his chair to drive home his point.
‘It is not for me to explain them,’ I replied rather lamely, I thought.
But my guardian let out a triumphant‘Ha’ and opened his left fist to reveal the key.
‘Nor, apparently, is it for Alfred Maurice Job Cyril Fairbank to reveal.’ He threw the key up and it disappeared.
‘Why do you keep giving me extra names?’ Alfred Fairbank asked peevishly.
‘To peeve you.’ Sidney Grice smiled thinly. ‘Tell me how Miss Freda Wilde achieved her partial cremation, Alfred Maurice Job Cyril Henry Fairbank.’ He ambled back towards us, but stopped halfway and stuck out his cane at the old servant. ‘Tell me the truth, Fairbank, or does Miss Middleton have to wring it out of you like soapy water from a poorly rinsed grubby brown dishcloth?’
I tried to look menacing, but I was not sure what wringing the truth out of an old man might entail.
‘I do not—’
‘I am not listening.’ Mr G clapped his hands over his ears and started humming loudly with no tune or rhythm.
‘What are you hiding from us, Mr Fairbank?’ I asked and he bowed his head. A terrible thought struck me. ‘Did you start that fire?’
‘No.’ The old butler recoiled in shock. ‘No, of course not. I loved that house and everyone in it.’
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Page 26