And I knew that there was nothing I could say to make it easier. ‘Too many women have died for nothing.’ I leaned forward and kissed her. ‘Do not become one of them, Freddy.’
And I turned and ran until I could not catch my breath. Detectives do not sob their hearts out in front of their clients.
74
The Painted Suns
SIDNEY GRICE WAS unusually cheery over dinner that evening, humming what might have ben a tune once as he browsed a crisp new copy of Stringwater’s Illustrated History of Clog Fighting.
‘How was your trip to Limehouse?’ I asked.
Cook had roasted some vegetables for a change and, with great quantities of salt and pepper, they were almost worth eating.
My guardian dusted his carrots with mustard powder. ‘I managed to persuade Mr Jones/Chang Foo that talking to me was preferable to a visit from Inspector Pound, who has gained an unfortunate reputation for being incorruptible.’
Spirit sprang into the chair next to his.
‘Unfortunate?’
‘Nobody believes in reputations any more,’ he said, in what sounded like the start of a witty aphorism but never became one.
‘And did Mr Jones tell you anything useful?’
‘Indeed,’ he agreed readily. ‘He told me there is a clipper with a consignment of high-quality Assam tea waiting to dock in the morning.’
‘And did he happen to mention anything relevant about Lucy Bocking?’
‘He told me one thing.’ He poked a toothpick in the hole of his salt cellar and blew. ‘That while she was being assaulted she cried out, Stop it, you fool.’
‘Was he in the room then?’ I asked, and my guardian exchanged patient glances with Spirit.
‘I thought it was so obvious that I did not trouble to mention it,’ he explained. ‘The inkwell Jones peered into is a periscope. When I dropped so elegantly to the floor during our first visit, I saw that there was a pipe leading from it through the ceiling. It also acts as a hearing tube.’
‘Into one of those painted suns,’ I guessed.
‘You are guessing,’ he complained.
‘No, I am not.’
‘Nonetheless you are correct.’ He trickled vinegar on to his potatoes.
‘So Mr Jones not only permits women to be attacked on his premises,’ I deduced. ‘He likes to watch.’
‘We all like to watch.’ Mr G folded the bottom corner of a page down and, before I could express my distaste at his remark, continued, ‘It is what we like to watch that differentiates some of us from beasts or stockbrokers.’
‘Why, when you insist that food should be tasteless, do you always use so many condiments?’ I poured myself some water.
‘Food should not have flavour.’ He dipped a spoon into the horseradish. ‘But flavourings, by definition, should. I have received,’ he slipped an envelope out from under the tablecloth, ‘a very civil letter from St Philomena’s Convent, outlining all the holy works they perform. If you would care to peruse it, I can place it upon my Tableware Transference Device and convey it to you in twenty-three seconds.’
‘No, thank you.’
Mr G pouted at this lost opportunity to play with his new toy – a continuous belt of thin wooden slats running the length of the table and powered by a foot pedal.
‘The Mother Superior leaves me with no reasonable doubt that they would appreciate a donation and the larger the better.’
Molly was tramping up the stairs.
‘Then they must be happy that you offered one.’
Sidney Grice greeted my statement blankly. ‘You appear to have mistaken my enquiry as to whether they would welcome a donation for an intent to give them one.’ He turned the page over. ‘And so apparently has the Reverend Mother Mary Peter, who has offered to say prayers for my soul, though I am not sure—’ he refolded the letter and placed it tantalizingly upon the transference belt—‘what gave her the impression that I had one.’
‘The fact that you are human?’ I remained untantalized.
‘Am I?’
Molly burst in and Spirit jumped.
‘Why are you here?’ Sidney Grice snapped.
‘I’ve come to clear,’ Molly announced.
‘But we have not finished eating,’ I told her, before her employer could give her the same information more aggressively.
‘What?’ She pulled her neck back incredulously. ‘Cook didntn’t not never think you’d eat any of that.’
And two storeys below us the doorbell rang.
75
Blood in the Brandy
THE BELL RANG three times before Molly got to the front door and I followed at her heels for its summons sounded urgent. George Pound stood on the steps.
‘Yes?’ Molly demanded.
‘I am on my way to the Midland,’ he announced over her head, ‘and I thought you and Mr Grice might want to be there.’
‘Oh, I aintn’t not got no time for that.’ Molly sighed. ‘Take Miss Middleton instead.’
I wished he could – I wished he would take me in his arms there and then, and I could tell him how happy I was to see him and all about my silly premonition, but I took my bonnet calmly off the table while Mr G donned his soft felt hat.
‘Prince Ulrich?’ I asked. ‘Are you arresting him?’
The inspector rushed back to his waiting Black Maria. ‘Bit late for that,’ he called as we hastened to join him. ‘We’ve just had a report that Schlangezahn has been murdered.’
‘Oh, what a pity.’ Mr G pushed past me into the back of the van, where five uniformed policemen were already seated. ‘I have selected the wrong cane.’
And I barely had time to squeeze on to the bench beside three men who were cursed by an inability to sit with their knees less than two feet apart, before George Pound slammed the door shut and went to join the driver up at the front.
‘What’s that whistling?’ A sergeant twitched his nose to sniff out the source of the noise, which I would have described as more of a high-pitched whine.
‘If you are referring to the musical tone, it emanates from my Grice Patent Canine Sonar Repellent Device,’ Mr G divulged haughtily.
The constable opposite me gawked. ‘You what?’
‘It should be playing a note undetectable by the human ear, which dogs find distressing.’
‘I’m not enjoying it much myself,’ I confessed.
‘The pitch is supposed to be one and three-quarter octaves higher.’ Mr G twiddled the handle and the volume increased.
‘Can’t you turn it off?’ The sergeant wiggled a finger in his ear.
‘I am endeavouring to do so.’ He twisted it three half-revolutions clockwise. ‘But the valve appears to have jammed.’
‘Oh good.’ A constable clamped his hands to the sides of his head.
The noise grew louder and began to warble.
‘Dash it.’ Sidney Grice banged the handle on the floor and I looked ahead innocently. I did not like to tell my guardian that Molly had taken it upon herself to use some of his sticks to fish laundry out of the copper, and I had helped her to dry them and put them back in the rack before he came home.
Ten jostling, bruising minutes later we were there, Mr G waving his stick so vigorously to discourage two collies that came prancing over to greet him that he caught a young lady under the chin. ‘Both our evenings would be much improved if you would take more care and make less noise,’ he advised above her howls.
The cane clicked and she and it fell mercifully silent.
76
Shooting from the Hip
THE ENTRANCE TO the Midland Grand Hotel was guarded by two doormen, supplemented by a constable.
A man in a frock coat hurried across the strangely deserted lobby to greet us.
‘Cecil Simms, the under-manager,’ he introduced himself. ‘I am afraid the manager is away this evening.’
‘Did he elope with a smoking gun?’ Mr G asked hopefully, and Simms flapped.
‘Indeed not, sir.�
�
‘Why a gun?’ Pound asked.
‘If you quit your habit of setting fire to tobacco, you might be able to detect it too.’ Sidney Grice swept past. ‘Plus the aroma of burning wool and singed flesh.’
I inhaled and thought I smelled something.
Two Prussian soldiers stepped aside at the sight of Inspector Pound’s warrant card to let us pass into the anteroom where not so very long ago I had sampled a sparkling Riesling. The smell of cordite was strong now and as Pound turned to his left I saw the body.
The prince was on the same sofa from which he had toasted me a few nights ago, but he did not look so magnificent now. Ulrich Schlangezahn was slumped back, mouth agape. There were three bloodstains on his Prussian blue coat and the golden epaulette on his right shoulder had been torn apart – by a fourth bullet, I decided.
Sidney Grice strolled to the back of the sofa. ‘Two of the bullets went completely through.’ He indicated with his stick the splintered holes in the mahogany wainscoting.
‘Whoever it was must have taken him by surprise.’ Pound slid a partly smoked cigar out of the dead man’s right hand. Ulrich’s trousers were starting to smoulder and the skin of his thigh to char. His air gun was propped untouched against the seat cushion. Pound sniffed and asked me, ‘Can you smell perfume?’
‘He wore an eau de Cologne.’ I looked into those blind, staring eyes.
The sergeant tutted. ‘Not very manly.’
‘But preferable to the stink of stale sweat,’ I muttered, having had a throat-full of that in the confines of the van.
‘There is a second, more feminine perfume,’ Mr G announced before a fight broke out.
George Pound walked behind the sofa, poked his finger into the holes in the panelling, paced back again and crouched before the body. He dabbed at the coat and sniffed his finger.
‘A woman,’ the sergeant deduced cleverly.
‘A small one, I’ll wager,’ George pronounced. ‘His coat is covered in gunpowder so the gun was fired at very close range. There is not room between sofa and this coffee table to kneel, or space on the table to sit on it.’ A tumbler of brandy sat untouched apart from the gore splattered over the cut glass and into the spirit. There was still a soda syphon waiting to be used. ‘So somebody stood directly in front of him. The entrance and exit wounds are almost in a line parallel to the floor, so she did not tower over the deceased, even though he was seated, and,’ he pointed to the pool of blood on the floor, ‘you can see five small footprints leading away.’ He looked about. ‘So a short woman who will be covered in burnt cordite and blood.’
‘The presence of a lady’s perfume in a room does not mean that she was here when the shots were fired, or even that she has ever been in here at all.’ Sidney Grice opened the double doors a fraction, peeped into the private dining room and inhaled.
‘Somebody could have sprayed the scent, I suppose,’ I conceded, reluctant to see George Pound’s diagnosis so easily dismissed.
‘Also, some people shoot from hip level.’ Mr G kept his back to us all. ‘Especially those fortunate enough to have escaped the occidental regions of the temporarily United States of America. But,’ he slid his palms upwards from the handles, ‘I would think it prudent to ask what information the short lady, who wears that perfume and is liberally adorned in gore and cordite, possesses about Prince Ulrich’s death.’
George Pound and I glanced at each other. Sidney Grice bunched his arms and flung the doors apart.
Wisporia Wright sat facing us across the table, in deepest mourning, her black veil up and her face, as the inspector had predicted, splattered in fresh blood.
77
The Executioner
I WAS SO taken aback by this revelation that I hardly noticed the man standing behind Mrs Wright, gripping her shoulder. I recognized him at once, though, as the red-headed man in the long maroon cloak who I had seen at the Golden Dragon the night that Peter and I entrapped Prince Ulrich. The man was struggling hard to keep his expression blank, but the muscles of his face were bunching and unbunching continuously.
‘Rittmeister Heidrick Hildebrand.’ He introduced himself with a stiff bow of the head. T am Prince Ulrich’s aide.’
‘Was’ Sidney Grice corrected him.
Wisporia Wright had both hands resting open on the stained white cloth. ‘Mr Grice.’ She spoke steadily and clearly. ‘And Miss Middleton. As you can see, I have done your job for you.’
I stared at her in shock. ‘You killed him?’
‘With that.’ She waved the back of her hand towards a little double-barrelled handgun, a Remington Derringer, lying like a visiting card on a silver tray in the middle of the table.
Hildebrand tightened his grip and, from a contraction in his mouth, he would have preferred it to be round her neck.
George made a calming motion with his hand. ‘I am Inspector Pound of the Metropolitan Police.’ He showed his card.
‘We bought it for Albertoria,’ she continued, as if he had rudely interrupted her anecdote at a soirée. ‘But she refused to carry it. If she had,’ Mrs Wright reflected, ‘she might have done the job herself, and saved her father and myself a great deal of upset.’ From the way she carped, Albertoria might have been refusing to practise the piano.
‘Let us be quite clear about this.’ Inspector Pound walked round to her side. ‘Are you confessing to murdering Prince Ulrich?’
Wisporia Wright tinkled with polite amusement. ‘Oh no, Inspector. I have not murdered anybody. I executed him.’
I saw the aide’s free hand go back, but George Pound put out his arm to guard his prisoner’s face.
‘Come with me,’ the inspector said and took her by the arm.
‘I always imagined that he would look evil until the inquest,’ she chattered as she let him guide her away. ‘But he was a handsome devil and tonight he was so charming, you would not have thought he needed to stoop so low.’
‘Give me ein minute mit her,’ Hildebrand snarled, but the door closed behind them. He grasped the back of his chair and brought himself back under control. ‘The finest man I ever met,’ he said.
‘Quite possibly.’ Sidney Grice went to the sideboard and poured a large brandy. ‘Drink that, Rittmeister Hildebrand, and then we can talk.’
78
The Hunter of Men
THE PRUSSIAN DID as he was bid, taking his drink in quick gulps as I had seen some Cossacks do with vodka once.
‘Prince Ulrich Schlangezahn never raped a voman in his life,’ he began without prompting. ‘As even she’ he almost vomited the last word, ‘said, he never needed to. Zu prince voz being vott you vould call a vomanizer. He made a sport of seducing them and daring zer husbands, brothers, fathers to challenge him to duels. Most knew his reputation too vell but some took up zu challenge. The prince voz one of zu best swordsmen and shooters in zu Imperial Army. He never lost but he never killed a man, just vounded them.’
‘Well, that is all right then,’ I muttered acidly, but the aide hardly noticed.
‘He voz not alone in this behaviour. A lot of his fellows did zu same and vorse. Zen Gerda, his younger sister, voz attacked or seduced – it is not for sure vich – in London. She killed herself. The authorities let it be said zat it voz . . . I do not know the English vord.’
‘Cholera,’ I told him.
‘Zo.’ He nodded. ‘You are knowing zis much.’ He toyed with his glass.
‘Would you like another?’ I asked.
‘Vy not?’
I got up. There were low voices and heavy noises coming from the antechamber.
‘Prince Ulrich changed. You have an expression about stealers of rabbits changing sides.’
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper,’ I proffered.
‘Just zo,’ he agreed. ‘He hunted zees men down. Every night he is going round the East End and Limehouse looking for zem, sometimes viv us but mostly alone. It becomes his obsession.’
‘Did he kill Johnny Wallace?’ I asked.
/> ‘Viv his Vindbusche,’ Hildebrand confirmed. ‘And zer was a man he drowned in a rain barrel last year. The police thought zat was a drunken accident.’
‘Camford Berrick?’ My guardian clipped on his pince-nez to examine nothing, as far as I could see.
‘I am thinking that voz his name.’
This was all a bit too cosy for me. ‘What about Albertoria Wright?’ I demanded. ‘Your fine prince was seen trying to drag her away.’
‘To save her from zat place,’ Hildebrand told me. ‘He could see she voz young and . . . vulnerable.’
‘Then why did he not say that at her inquest?’ I banged the table.
‘He vould not lie.’ The rittmeister looked up at me. ‘Voz he to tell the parents zer daughter voz behavink as a whore? Alzo,’ he took another drink, ‘he vanted his reputation to be bad so ze real procurers vould trust him.’
I had one last go. ‘He tried to rape me.’
Hildebrand closed his eyes wearily. ‘Prince Ulrich thought your man waz vot he postured to be and voz trying to entrap him.’ His voice shook. ‘Even his murderess. She voz coming asking for help and he voz trying to give it.’ The aide finished his drink. ‘And now you vill excuse me. Zer is much to arrange.’ He stood up. ‘Prince Ulrich held you in high esteem, Mr Grice.’
He clicked his heels.
‘And I he,’ Sidney Grice said. ‘It is because of men like him that – in the next war – our two countries will unite, as they did at Waterloo, and crush those foppish rascals the French once and for all.’
Heidrick Hildebrand saluted my godfather and made a clipped bow to me, and went back into the antechamber to tend to his master.
79
The Death of Hope and the Deepest Cut
GERALDINE HOCKADAY HAD been taken to the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital in Lower Moorfields, but, other than removing the infected remains of her left eye and dressing the wounds, there was nothing they could do for her. She was taken to University College Hospital to be closer to her family home, but her parents did not avail themselves of that convenience.
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Page 31