Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Then tell us what really happened,’ I urged, and Mr G flung his hands from his head.

  ‘I am listening now,’ he proclaimed.

  ‘I cannot.’ Alfred Fairbank pushed down his twitching arm.

  ‘At last we are getting somewhere,’ Sidney Grice said, though I was thinking the opposite.

  ‘You must,’ I pressed the old man.

  ‘No.’ Alfred Fairbank curled himself up. ‘You don’t understand, miss. I cannot because I do not know.’

  62

  The Burning

  SIDNEY GRICE SAUNTERED round the old servant, whistling softly between his teeth.

  ‘Why do you not know, Mr Fairbank?’ I asked. But he had buried himself into himself, folding his arms in a tight embrace.

  ‘Let me assist you in formulating a reply,’ Mr G suggested cheerfully. ‘Is it, perchance – and you may remediate my suggestion, should it be fallacious – because you were not there?’

  Fairbank said nothing but eventually dipped his head.

  ‘Where were you?’ I enquired.

  ‘There was a fellow butler, Crofter Tamley, next door, on the other side to New House – Elderberry House, it was called.’ Fairbanks voice rustled so softly that I had to strain my ears. ‘His master had a well-stocked wine cellar and left care of it to Tamley. If Crofter said a wine was corked he was never questioned. I fell into the habit of going there – after Steep House was put to bed – and sampling some rare and expensive vintages, almost every night towards the end.’

  ‘Did anybody else see you?’ I tried to imagine him doing anything so deceitful.

  ‘Never, and Tamley is dead now, about five years ago, I think.’

  ‘How convenient,’ Mr G muttered, stopping behind Fairbanks chair, ‘though not necessarily for him.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I urged Fairbank on.

  ‘We had drunk about half a bottle of a good claret in his pantry when we saw a light flickering. Tamley went to look out of the window. He couldn’t see much from where we were below stairs, but then he said, Bit late to be having a bonfire, isn’t it? And I was just getting up to see for myself when he said Hello, that isn’t a bonfire. It’s Steep House. I jumped up and he was right. Send for the fire brigade, I shouted and ran out.

  ‘There was no doubt about it. The flames were coming through the roof and out of the windows in the south wing where all the Wildes slept. There was a gap in the hedge I used to use. I ran through it and saw that all the front of Steep House was ablaze. Masonry was already crashing down. The heat was so intense I couldn’t get to within thirty feet. There could be no hope of getting inside.

  ‘I could see the flames through the below-stairs windows and somebody in the light-well from the cellar – hands reached out through the bars and a face pressed between them. I could not think who it might be for none of the servants lived below stairs, and then I realized it was Eric Bocking. It was just like Master Eric to risk his life for others and I can only suppose that he got lost in the smoke. My first thought was to thank God that he had reached safety. But then I remembered that the grating was padlocked and I saw that his clothes and hair were on fire, and he was begging and screaming . . . There was nothing I could do. I watched him burn and, when he fell, I staggered backwards, just getting away, and nearly tripped over Miss Freda. She was lying on the lawn.’

  ‘Prone or supine?’ Mr G broke in.

  ‘On her back,’ the old man said. ‘Lying on her back.’ It was as though, now that he was telling us the truth, he did not believe it himself. ‘I could see straight away she was badly burned and at first I thought she was dead, she was so . . . charred. But then she made a noise, a whimper, I suppose, and I kneeled down beside her and said Help is on its way, miss. And she said, Daddy, Mummy. And I realized they must still be in there with Bethany and Lisa, the maids, dead or dying – dead, I hoped, after what I had seen.’ He coughed violently.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ I offered, but he flopped his dappled hand weakly to decline.

  ‘Miss Bocking was the first to arrive. She said You have saved Freddy, Fairbank. And, when she came back, she said, I will see you rewarded for this.’ He coughed again, drily. ‘What could I do – deny it and admit that I had neglected my duty when I might have been able to help them? Or take my reward?’

  ‘Which was?’ I asked.

  ‘The rent of this house for life and thirty pounds a year through a trust fund that Miss Lucy asked her father to set up.’ Alfred Fairbank hugged himself miserably. ‘And now, I suppose, I shall lose everything.’

  ‘Back from where?’ Mr G pounced.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Changing her dress, I suppose. It got covered in ash and singed.’

  ‘Oh, Alfred.’ Sidney Grice flung out his arms like a pantomime damsel in distress. ‘Rarely was a man less fitted to bear the name of our wise Wessex monarch. I can only recall the names and dates of birth and death of a great many men and women who have been so unfittingly rewarded. But, as far as I am concerned – Al, Alfy, Fred, Alfredo – you may keep your thirty pieces of silver.’

  Alfred Fairbank struggled to his feet. He held out his hand and Sidney Grice viewed it in disgust.

  ‘I should like to thank you, sir.’

  ‘When I survey the uncountable things I want in this squalid world,’ he said, ‘your gratitude is not amongst their number. But do not become too cheerful, Alfred Maurice Job Cyril Henry William Fairbank, for you may be sure that, before the moon has repeated its repertoire, your grievous sins will find you out.’

  Sidney Grice spun balletically on his heel and strode back to the door where the key was already in the lock, magically, it seemed.

  A tabby cat lay curled in the sunshine. ‘Not a cloud in the sky,’ I commented.

  ‘There is little hope of finding one elsewhere.’ Sidney Grice batted an acorn off the path and came to attention on the kerb. And so he remained, immobile and staring straight ahead, for another forty minutes until a hansom came by.

  63

  The Bees and the Box

  THE TELEGRAM CAME just as Molly was trying to hang her master’s coat upside down.

  MARCH COME NOW GERALDINE

  ‘Tea.’ Sidney Grice headed for his study, knocking on the door before entering.

  ‘I had better go then,’ I said wearily, for I had been looking forward to a beverage myself and I had no good news to give her.

  ‘Indeed.’ He shut me out and within two minutes I had rejoined the affray optimistically known as traffic.

  ‘I took it orf’m for stayin’ awt,’ Mrs Freval said in response to my enquiry about Turndap’s hat. ‘Lawd she aint ’appy.’ She rolled her eyes up. ‘Been squalkin’ like a cod she ’as. Got muggins to send that message. Missed my callin’ as a slavey, I did. At least I’d get paid.’

  ‘Not if you worked for Mr Grice,’ I told her.

  And she was still complaining as I trudged upstairs. I knocked and heard a yelp.

  ‘Geraldine, it is me, March.’

  I heard shuffling and a chair being dragged away, and two bolts being withdrawn and a lock turning. ‘Oh, March,’ she sobbed.

  Geraldine Hockaday’s face was more pinched than I had ever seen it and streaked in long red lines like a child who had been playing with greasepaint.

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  Geraldine unhooked the chain to admit me, slamming and barring the door quickly in my wake.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, but Geraldine was making choking sounds and flapping her hands as if fighting off a swarm of bees.

  ‘What has happened, Geraldine?’ I moved towards her, but knew better than to touch her.

  Geraldine did not reply. She doubled over, retching, and fluttered her right hand out, and I realized that she was indicating a small cardboard box resting on creased wrapping paper. I went over and lifted off the lid. Inside was a severed ear and I knew at once that I seen it before. There was an unmistakeable old laceration acros
s the lobe.

  64

  The Destruction of Hope

  I CAUGHT MY BREATH. ‘When did this arrive?’ I asked, as steadily as I could.

  ‘This-this-this morning,’ she managed.

  ‘By post?’

  ‘P-pushed through the letterbox . . . Mrs Freval brought—’

  There was a sheet of waxed paper on the table too, the sort you might get your fish or cheese in. It did not smell of anything. ‘It is Peter’s,’ Geraldine cried out.

  ‘Yes.’ I unfolded the paper and saw pencilled inside:

  IF YOU WANT THE REST OF HIM

  PUT £50 THROUGH THE LETTERBOX OF

  97 HOPE STREET BEFORE NOON TOMORROW.

  NO TRICKS.

  I brought out my new hip flask and found two glasses.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gin,’ I said.

  ‘I . . . don’t.’ Every syllable was a battle for her.

  ‘You do today.’ I poured her a tot and put it in her shaking grasp.

  ‘I do not have fifty pounds,’ she said and sipped at it like a baby bird dipping in a fountain. ‘I cannot even pay the rent since Peter went away.’

  ‘I can get the money.’ I swallowed mine in two quick swigs and poured myself another. ‘But, Geraldine . . .’ I drew a breath. ‘You must realize that these people might not give you Peter back.’

  Geraldine Hockaday threw up her hands and sloshed her drink. ‘But of course they will, March. They must know that he is not a criminal by now. Peter is no use to them and they will not want to house and feed him forever.’

  ‘I will post the money in the morning,’ I decided with a heavy heart.

  Geraldine nodded avidly. ‘And Mr Grice will not try to follow them and risk frightening them off?’

  ‘He will not,’ I vowed and finished my drink. ‘Shall I take this?’ I put the lid back on the box and made to refold the brown paper.

  ‘No,’ Geraldine said urgently. ‘Don’t. It is all I have of him.’

  ‘I will come back tomorrow,’ I said. ‘You will keep your door locked, won’t you?’

  I knew I had no need to ask that last question for she was up immediately and ready to wedge the chair back as soon as I was gone.

  *

  ‘What is the nineteenth clause of Grice’s nineteenth law?’ Sidney Grice demanded when I had told him what had happened.

  ‘Never admonish your goddaughter,’ I mumbled wearily, for I was not in a mood to be harangued.

  ‘Never allow the client to retain evidence,’ he quoted, without looking up from his latest invention, ‘unless the retention is likely to stimulate fresh evidence.’

  ‘Do you think he is dead?’

  ‘Kidnapping for ransom is not Hanratty’s style.’ My guardian turned his latest gadget upside down. I had no idea what it was – a steam engine with no funnel or wheels? ‘And most criminals stick more rigidly to their modus operandi than an orthodox Jew to the Shabbat. He might want some compensation for the trouble of returning a body, though.’

  ‘So you’re convinced that his disappearance is Hanratty’s doing?’

  ‘If anybody else had committed such a crime in his fiefdom the hounds of Hagop would be baying for blood all over London.’ Sidney Grice loosened four screws and levered a panel open.

  ‘So I will be paying fifty pounds for a corpse?’

  He fiddled about inside and something whirred. ‘From what you tell me . . .’ He replaced the screws. ‘I should say that is probably the case.’

  I had thought as much the first time that I saw it. A cow’s blood may clot but a joint cut from it does not have the necessary chemicals and does not coagulate. The blood in the ear was definitely clotted and so it had been cut from a dead man.

  ‘I shall spend tomorrow with Geraldine,’ I decided.

  ‘As you wish.’ He turned his invention back up and depressed a lever. Nothing happened. ‘Excellent,’ he murmured with great satisfaction.

  *

  Hope Street ran parallel to Oxford Street, but there was no hope for it at present. The houses were being demolished to create space for a new department store and work was well under way. I climbed over piles of rubble and tipped a workman for dragging out the old door so that I could cross a trench, though I knew full well he had probably hidden the door in the first place.

  Number 97 consisted of a one-storey facade, but it still had a door with a letter slot in it.

  ‘Ain’t none livin’ there but rats,’ another workman yelled over the smashing of sledgehammers into a wall opposite, as he spotted me about to make a delivery.

  ‘Even rats get hungry,’ I called back, wondering if he would be straight over the moment my back was turned, but there was a tug on the envelope as I slipped it through and it was whipped out of my hand so hard that I barked my knuckles on the flap.

  I crouched and tried to peer through but saw nothing except more rubble and dust, and a few half-bricks rolling down a mound as the taker of my money scrambled away.

  *

  George came to see me – a very quick call on his way to Liverpool Street Station. They wanted him back in Ely for a case with which he had been dealing before he left. It should take a week at most.

  We kissed surreptitiously for my guardian was upstairs.

  ‘You will take care of yourself.’

  ‘I won’t forget to clean my teeth,’ he promised.

  ‘I mean it.’ I held his face. ‘You must come back to me.’

  George touched my chin. ‘I love you with all my heart.’

  And, when he had gone, I burst into tears for I had a horrible premonition that something dreadful was going to happen to him.

  65

  The Washing of Words

  I LET MYSELF IN. Molly was clomping downstairs with Spirit under one arm.

  ‘Been a very naughty puppy, she has.’ Molly shook a finger at Spirit. ‘Got dust all over your room, she did. So if you think I lied on your bed and had forty blinks instead of dusting, you’d be very much mistakened indeed.’

  ‘So I will not find my pillow flattened?’ I asked, as Spirit jumped on to the bottom step.

  Molly mimed puffing on a clay pipe. ‘Well,’ she began uncertainly before gaining speed, ‘I know you like it flattered ’cause you flatter it yourself every night, so I flattered it for you.’

  I smiled. ‘That was thoughtful.’.

  Spirit cantered back up the stairs.

  ‘And dontn’t you not go making a ring round the bath what I cleaned when I wasntn’t not sleeping,’ Molly called up and Spirit snaked her tail.

  Mr G stood behind his desk like a shop assistant hoping to sell me Freddy Wilde’s diary, which lay closed on a clean sheet of foolscap paper. ‘I have been considering the pattern of incineration of this tome,’ he announced. ‘Perhaps you could rouse yourself to do the same.’

  I picked the journal up. ‘Both covers have been burned.’

  ‘On Grice’s Scale of Carbonization, how badly?’

  ‘Four and a quarter,’ I guessed.

  ‘And a quarter?’ Sidney Grice clipped on his pince-nez and took a closer look. ‘I will grant you one eighth,’ he conceded.

  ‘And I shall treasure it always,’ I promised. ‘The edges of all the pages are charred too, and I shall not bore you by putting a figure to that.’

  ‘I should be fascinated,’ he told me, ‘since I invented the system not three minutes ago.’

  ‘Then that was hardly a fair question.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ He tossed his head indignantly. ‘It was not fair at all.’

  I held Freddy’s diary to the light. ‘The page looks a bit oily.’

  ‘That is one way of describing it.’ He hugged himself. ‘So perhaps you would like to tell me whether the book was open or closed whilst being oxidized?’

  I leafed carefully through it until I came to the last entry. Mr G had removed the bookmark.

  ‘It must have been at least partly open here for the flames to get
in.’

  ‘And lick the recto, or right-hand page – but not the verso, or left?’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘What indeed?’ he responded unhelpfully. ‘Ink acts in two ways. First it mechanically sticks to a surface – rather as graphite does – but, more importantly, as even you must know, it stains the material one is writing upon, most commonly paper. Hence, and you may have observed this, one can rub away a pencil mark, leaving only a pressure indentation, whilst you cannot erase an inked manuscript without abrading the actual fibres. Why – and you probably know the answer to this if you think very hard about it – do we use blotting paper?’

  ‘To remove excess wet ink before it smudges,’ I tried.

  He had a way of making me doubt that even the most patiently correct answer would be foolish, but this response seemed to satisfy him for he continued with, ‘And for how long does ink stay wet?’

  I knew full well that whatever figure I gave would be greeted with scorn and was not going to be entrapped so easily this time.

  ‘That depends,’ I said, ‘on various factors.’ I put my fingers behind my back to count hastily. ‘Six of which I shall presently enumerate. They include the type of ink, the type of paper, the amount of ink dispensed by the nib, the temperature of the room and the presence or absence of a breeze.’

  ‘You seem to have ground to a halt at five, thank goodness.’ Mr G yawned. ‘Excuse me.’ He covered his mouth. ‘But you have a gift for making even such an attention-transfixing subject almost unbearably tedious.’

  ‘What would your answer be then?’ I challenged, and braced myself for a stream of figures and mathematical formulae.

  ‘If I wish – as I always do – to be precise, I should say somewhere in the region of a few minutes.’ Sidney Grice picked up his patent self-filling pen and wrote on a piece of fresh notepaper. This fine work of calligraphy is intended solely as a sample of pigment. He blotted and blew on the word. ‘Is that dry now?’

  ‘I should say so.’

  ‘Then do so.’