Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Precisely.’

  I paced back to the window and looked out. The boy was still performing and still being ignored.

  ‘But, if Lucy’s attacker had been castrated,’ I reasoned, ‘surely – and, I am sorry, I cannot think of a more delicate way of phrasing this – he would not have been capable of . . . having congress.’

  Sidney Grice blanched at my mouthing such an obscenity but steeled himself to continue. ‘Are you familiar with that fascinating novel, I was a Sultan’s Slave, by Lydia Lovely?’

  This was not a conversation I had expected to be having with any adult male when I had read the book surreptitiously with Maudy Glass in the old barn at the end of Wood Lane in Parbold.

  ‘Yes, I have read it,’ I confessed, half-expecting to be scolded.

  ‘Good.’ He put his pencil away. ‘Then you will be familiar with page seventy-six where one of the three hundred and fourteen unsavoury incidents is described in lurid detail – namely, the seduction of the sultan’s nineteenth wife, the voluptuous nineteen-year-old Fatima by—’ He jerked his right elbow towards me.

  ‘Abdul, the eunuch,’ I remembered. Maudy and I had been appalled and thrilled by that episode. ‘But surely it is a work of fiction and rather overheated at that? In fact I am surprised that you are familiar with it.’

  Sidney Grice blinked rapidly. ‘It is what our filthy Gallic neighbours call a roman-à-clef.’ Two halfpennies appeared in his left hand. ‘A true story in which the names of the characters have been changed. Miss Lydia Lovely is now the wife of a prominent banker and Grand Master of the Ancient Order of Shrivers.’

  ‘I do not suppose such a revelation would do his reputation much good.’

  ‘Not in quarters with whom his business is likely to prosper,’ he agreed.

  ‘I do not want to belabour this,’ I began hesitantly, ‘but surely a castrated man cannot achieve—’

  ‘Clearly he cannot produce seed,’ Mr G completed my thought hastily. ‘But the seminal vesicles, prostate glands and bulbourethral glands can and do produce quantities of fluid. Lord . . .’ He fiddled with his cravat. ‘I have not had such an awkward conversation since I had to explain to my mother how she came to be gravid with child, id est me.’

  I gaped. ‘Did she really not know?’

  ‘She thought she had swallowed me in a rock pool.’

  I went back to my chair to recover from a coughing fit. ‘If only we had the names of those patients,’ I managed to say at last.

  ‘Hospital records are scant and their filing muddled at the best of times,’ Sidney Grice told me. ‘But let us consider – apart from his mutilation – what kind of man we are looking for.’

  ‘His voice would not be high if he had already reached maturity,’ I observed, ‘though I do not suppose he would have much facial hair.’

  I did not add like you, for my guardian regarded his smooth skin as an evolutionary advance.

  “Do make an effort to say something less obvious.’ Mr G rattled his coins impatiently.

  ‘You are always telling me not to ignore the obvious,’ I retorted.

  ‘Not to the exclusion of all other thought,’ he huffed.

  ‘Well, he must be well-educated to make such a pun on the doctor’s name.’

  ‘But not wealthy enough to be in a private room,’ my guardian pointed out, quite obviously, I thought. ‘And . . .’ His expression became even more sour than usual. ‘Why do you persist in wearing that same pair of boots? You will have ploughed through my floor within nineteen years at this rate.’

  ‘They are very comfortable.’ I excused myself with a guilty glance at the scratched boards. ‘And, the next time we see the cobbler, I can get him to hammer it in properly.’

  ‘He cannot be much good at his craft,’ my guardian remarked. ‘That gentleman in the green paisley waistcoat, the two-tone cravat, the pinstriped grey trousers and black, side-buttoned boots was complaining about a repair he had done.’

  ‘He even dropped—’ I stopped and Sidney Grice looked at quizzically.

  ‘Go on,’ he urged.

  ‘His hammer.’ My words were hardly audible to my own ears as I tried to reconstruct in my mind what had seemed to be a trivial conversation. ‘He charged me fivepence,’ I remembered.

  ‘And you paid him that for banging in a nail?’ Mr G was incredulous.

  ‘Even worse,’ I said. ‘I had nothing smaller than a sixpence.’

  Mr G pfffed. ‘And, needless to say, he had no change.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed automatically. ‘And he said, Oh fanks, miss, you’re an oops-a-daisy.’

  He watched me keenly. ‘At what point in the proceedings?’

  ‘After I had handed him the money but – and this is the odd bit – he said oops before he dropped the hammer.’

  ‘You are sure of that?’

  ‘Positive. I thought the act seemed contrived at the time, but then the flower girl who stands on the corner said he was always doing silly things for a laugh and I thought no more about it.’

  ‘Until?’ Mr G asked eagerly.

  ‘I do not think he said oops-a-daisy at all,’ I pondered.

  ‘Then why did you waste your breath and my time telling me that he did?’ Sidney Grice hurled the coins away, but I did not hear them strike anything.

  ‘It was his pronunciation.’ I could almost hear the bootmaker’s voice. ‘I think he said Ops and then tried to cover it up.’

  ‘For once my ignorance is more profound than yours. What does ops mean other than a sickening abbreviation for operations or an acronym for the Obliteration of Penguins Society, of which I am a member.’

  ‘What have you got against penguins?’

  ‘Nothing very much except for their nasty jauntiness,’ he assured me. ‘It is just that I am of the opinion that the fewer species with which we have to share this ludicrously cluttered planet, the better.’

  ‘Ops was the wife of Saturn and the Greek goddess of plenty.’ I struggled to get back to the subject. ‘And munificence. He was saying that I was generous.’

  ‘A smooth-faced man with a knowledge of Greek mythology,’ Mr G said grimly. ‘And you told me that your shoddy and overpriced boot repair was not relevant to any of our cases.’

  ‘I did not think it was,’ I protested.

  ‘What is the point of not thinking that?’ he demanded angrily.

  ‘What are you writing?’ I asked, as he printed something on a blank sheet of paper.

  ‘A telegram.’ My guardian brought his temper back under control just as quickly as he had lost it. ‘To Chief Inspector Pound. He should be settling into his new office by now.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You know about his promotion?’ And I said a silent prayer that he had not pulled strings to help get it, for I wanted George to ascend on his own merit.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘In fact I recommended,’ he shot me a glance, ‘that he should not be given it.’

  ‘But why?’ I demanded indignantly.

  ‘Because he will spend more time in meetings and writing memoranda than doing what he is occasionally not too bad at – for a policeman.’ Mr G cupped his left palm and his two half-pennies fell one at a time into it. ‘Investigating crimes.’

  This seemed as good an opportunity as ever. ‘Now that he is a Chief Inspector—’

  ‘In the morning,’ my godfather ploughed on, ‘we shall take breakfast, bicker about something irrelevant, and seek out this irritating tradesman to see if he can explain himself.’

  ‘We can try,’ I mumbled, and he turned sharply.

  ‘What now? Why are you looking like a bloodhound caught ingesting his master’s slipper of tobacco?’

  ‘Nobody keeps their tobacco in their slippers.’

  ‘Silly people do. Explain your discomfort.’

  ‘I am not sure,’ I said, ‘but I think he might have realized he had given himself away.’ I hung my head. ‘He has probably gone into hiding by now.’

  ‘I hope you are ri
ght, March.’ He rested Charley Peace’s patella on a diagram of the internal workings of his ladder stick. ‘For you can be sure of one thing. He has not been loitering in Grosvenor Square for the fresh air.’

  ‘Lucy,’ I cried.

  ‘Ring for tea,’ he said nonchalantly.

  ‘Is that all you care about?’

  Sidney Grice took out a fresh sheet of paper. ‘He will not make an appearance at night. That would attract too much attention, especially as his face is known in the square. In the meantime . . .’ His new gunmetal pen was on his desk but he picked up his patent self-filler. ‘I shall send her a telegram.’

  And, as Sidney Grice began to print: BEWARE THE BOOTMAKER, Molly trundled in.

  ‘Listen carefully,’ her employer instructed, and she cocked an ear rather as Spirit did when he was confiding in her. ‘You will take these telegrams immediately. Do not even change into your outdoor boots. Your mission is urgent. Do you understand?’

  Molly crossed her fingers and her eyes. ‘Telegramps immediantly – which means urgent – indoor boots, urgent – which means immediantly,’ she recited with such concentration that I wanted to give her a ripple of applause.

  ‘Money.’ Mr G rammed a cotton pouch into her hand. ‘Go.’

  And Molly was off. I had seen racehorses make slower starts but they were the ones I had money on.

  85

  This, That and the Uvva

  THE HANSOM CAME while I was still raising the flag and Sidney Grice groaned when he spotted the driver.

  ‘Grosvenor Square,’ Mr G bellowed, with enough volume to rouse an army.

  ‘Grow what where?’ Old Peter cupped his ear and I repeated the name.

  ‘Grosvenor Square, it is, miss.’ Old Peter pulled his string to release the flap.

  ‘I said it more clearly than you,’ my godfather grumbled as I tugged on a wisp of loose stuffing that was sticking through a rip in the upholstery

  ‘Yes.’ The wisp was longer than I expected and getting thicker. ‘But your lips move differently from those of other men.’

  And that seemed to satisfy my guardian for Sidney Grice hated to be thought the same as others. It reeked of equality to him and, when I sneaked a sideways look, I caught him mouthing the words proudly. I had about half of a horse’s hair now.

  ‘If this man is the one we are looking for . . .’ I tried to push the stuffing back in but it had expanded. ‘Why would he go out of his way to draw attention to himself?’

  Sidney Grice pushed harder, though it was him, not me, who was taking two thirds of the seat. ‘Perhaps you would care to attempt to answer that question yourself.’

  ‘To taunt you.’ I poked the stuffing with my finger. It did not seem possible that so much had come through such a little slit.

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘I am trying.’ I got out my pencil to ram the thick wad down and the leather bowed under the pressure, but none of the stuffing went back in.

  ‘I was referring to your answering your own question.’

  ‘Inspector Pound told me that some habitual criminals are so sick of their own acts that they are relieved when they are apprehended, even if they face the severest penalties. Perhaps he wants to get caught.’ I had a nasty feeling that the rip was getting bigger.

  ‘Some do,’ Mr G agreed, ‘But not this one. Try harder.’

  I racked my brains. ‘I cannot.’

  My godfather pulled the cork out of his flask. ‘It would be odd indeed if he had not drawn attention to himself. A street tradesman who hides in the shadows would have aroused suspicions immediately. Local residents would probably have reported him for loitering.’

  ‘But why is he hanging around outside Lucy’s house?’

  Sidney Grice grimaced. ‘Let us hope that we get an opportunity to ask him.’ He banged on the roof and, when the hatch opened, shouted, ‘Faster.’ And mimed holding the reins of a galloping steed.

  ‘Oh sorry, guv. Goin’ too fast for you?’

  The hatch closed and we slowed to a gentle walk. In the end it made no difference for a hot-air balloon had come down in Maddox Street, blocking the road, attracting a curious crowd and frightening the horses. And, when we finally arrived in Cavendish Square, the bootmaker was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘No sign of him,’ I commented.

  ‘Apart from those splashes of dubbin and blacking on the pavement.’ Sidney Grice swept his cane over a wide area. ‘Or the scratch on the railing where he sometimes hung his placard.’

  ‘Apart from those,’ I conceded.

  ‘Or the snapped twig where he pushed his trolley into the rhododendron bushes,’ Mr G continued.

  ‘I meant there is no sign that he is here,’ I snapped, and Mr G grunted.

  ‘Why would there be when he is not?’ My guardian appeared to be checking his chin for a beard.

  A hansom pulled up, the horse shying at something I could not see or hear, and Inspector Pound leaped down.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grice. Your telegram sounded urgent.’

  ‘A telegram has no sound other than the rustle of paper or a swish if it is dropped and perhaps a light pat as it lands, depending upon the surface which interrupts its trajectory or—’

  ‘Excuse me interrupting your trajectory,’ the inspector said. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘Inspector.’ I shook his hand and felt him give mine a squeeze. ‘I trust you are well.’

  ‘Of course, if it alighted upon water, ranging from a puddle to an ocean,’ my guardian spoke over him, ‘the sounds would be very different but never urgent.’

  ‘I am very well, thank you, Miss Middleton.’ George winked at me. ‘I hope you are too.’

  He had a new suit on and looked very smart.

  ‘Miss Middleton made a semblance of that ignorant blunder regarding my doorbell when I made the uncharacteristic mistake of admitting her into my invigorating household,’ Mr G droned on.

  ‘We think we may have identified the murderer,’ I said.

  ‘We?’ my guardian queried. ‘Oh, I suppose Miss Middleton does serve one purpose. She proposes so many ridiculous explanations that the only one left must be correct. Unless you are going to arrest my ward, Inspector, I suggest you release her at your earliest convenience.’

  We let go of each other’s hands.

  ‘So who and where is your suspect, Mr Grice?’ George Pound asked.

  ‘Two obvious though pertinent questions,’ my godfather almost complimented him, ‘to which I have, as yet, no veracious response.’

  ‘There is a bootmaker who usually stands on that corner around this time,’ I explained, ‘and we think he may be the culprit but it is possible I have frightened him away.’

  I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear.

  ‘If only the other women had possessed your ability to terrify him,’ Mr G commented drily.

  ‘Well, apart from the polish, branch and scratch and the smell of trimmed leather, there is no sign of him now,’ Pound declared.

  ‘What smell?’ Mr G snuffled about like a bloodhound.

  ‘Oh, it is quite distinctive,’ Pound said airily. ‘Is that flower seller usually here?’

  The girl stood on the opposite corner, short and slight, in a patched dress much too big for her, a forlorn sight with her tray of unsold forget-me-nots.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Which is one of my six motives for engaging her in friendly banter,’ Sidney Grice set off towards her at a brisk pace. ‘You there, juvenile female floral purveyor.’

  The girl looked over in alarm.

  ‘Be no more afraid than you ought to be,’ my godfather sought but failed to reassure her, ‘for I intend you no harm, though my intentions may transmogrify as our intercourse progresses.’

  The girl let out a squeak, but it would have been more than her life was worth to put down her tray and run.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Inspector Pound’s voice rang out reassuringly. ‘We just want to talk to you.
’

  The flower girl hopped from one foot to the other.

  ‘We were just wondering,’ I told her as we drew close, ‘where the bootmaker is today.’

  ‘Blimey,’ the girl gasped. ‘I fought you was gonna ask where I stealed these flowers from.’

  Pound picked up a wilting nosegay. ‘Do you know where he is now?” he asked gently.

  ‘That last word was tautologous,’ my godfather informed him pleasantly. ‘If somebody is somewhere they must be there at the present time.’

  ‘What, old Bootsy?’ The girl grinned. ‘Oh, ’es a larf.’

  ‘That does not even meander vaguely in the direction of a reply,’ Sidney Grice scolded.

  ‘In what way?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, like the way ’e frew that ’ammer down,’ she guffawed. ‘And one time ’e got me to spill rubbish over some posh foreign geezer’s boots, just so ’e could clean ’em up and not even charge ’im. Mind you . . .’ She spluttered in mirth. ‘’E cut orf one of the gent’s waistycoat buttons. Don’t fink ’e knew I saw that.’

  ‘I do not fink you would be here if he did,’ Mr G mumbled.

  ‘I could do with a good laugh,’ Inspector Pound mused. ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  The girl looked about and her voice dropped. ‘’E ain’t in no trouble, is ’e?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I lied, before my guardian broke in with the truth. ‘It’s just that I have a loose heel and I can’t walk very far.’

  ‘Didn’t know gentry like yourselfs walked thery far anyways,’ she bantered.

  George Pound put the nosegay back and selected a pink carnation. ‘How much is this?’

  The girl assessed her customer, and no doubt his clothes at least doubled the price.

  ‘Them’s a penny each,’ she declared.

  ‘Outrageous.’ He sniffed the petals. ‘It must be worth at least thruppence.’ And he slipped her a silver coin.

  ‘You can ’ave six for that,’ she told him.

  ‘I only need one but I’ll take a pin.’ He smiled and presented the flower to me with a slight bow. ‘Have you seen him today?’

  I fastened it to my dress