“He’s a book collector?”
“Nothing so benign,” he replied. “In fact, it was because of the collection that Flora rarely set foot inside that room. She found the morbid atmosphere more unpleasant than the scent of our cigars.”
“R. M. Harcourt, of Harrow,” Jesperson said.
“You know of him?”
“I had not made the connection until this moment. He has written of his collection—at least, certain recent acquisitions, in a journal to which I subscribe.”
Turning to me, Jesperson explained that Mr. Harcourt took a particular interest in murder, and had, over the years, managed to acquire a goodly number of weapons—knives, guns, and a variety of sharp or heavy instruments that had caused the loss of human life: a lady’s hat pin, a piece of brick, a Japanese sword, an ordinary-looking iron poker. In addition, he had amassed a library on the subject of the crime, as well as what might be described as mementos of murder, odds and ends that were connected in some way with any famous—or infamous—crime: hair from the heads of murderers or their victims, bloodstained clothing, photographs of crime scenes, incriminating letters. He possessed poison rings, flasks, phials, bottles, and even the very cup in which Mrs. Maybrick had mixed the arsenic powder with which she’d killed her husband.
“He’s very proud of it,” Randall said. “Occasionally, people call at the house to see the collection, or to offer new items they hope he’ll buy. I was polite, but, frankly, I will never understand the appeal of such gruesome objects.
“After the accident, Flora became hysterical, and made me promise I’d never enter that room again. Then she decided that was not enough, and that I must not return to the house. She also suggested that we not announce our engagement, and wait until she’s twenty-one to marry.”
“She suspects her guardian?” Jesperson asked quietly.
Mr. Randall hesitated, then shook his head. “She says she does not. But she feels I am in danger, through my attachment to her, and if she’s right about that, who else could it be?”
“Forgive me, but . . . are there no rejected suitors?”
“Flora told me she received but two marriage proposals in her life, and she’s never mentioned anyone, I’ve never heard of any other man, who might harbor such strong feelings for her,” he replied. “But, in any case, she is wrong. Adcocks’s murder, quite naturally, affected her nerves. She sees danger, an unknown assassin, lurking everywhere; an evil force behind every accident.” He paused to take a deep breath.
“Shortly after the injury in the study, I chanced to stumble over an object in the hall—and I might have fallen and struck my head a second time if Flora hadn’t been there to catch me. This was the same object that Adcocks had bruised his foot on, and this coincidence was too much. Her nerves are not strong. How can they be? She’s suffered so much, has lost everyone she has ever loved—that’s when she insisted I leave at once, and not come back. She imagined danger where there was none.”
“And yet, whether or not you are in danger, someone killed Mr. Adcocks,” Jesperson said with heavy emphasis.
“Precisely. And if you can solve that crime, I hope her fears may be put to rest.”
AFTER MR. RANDALL HAD DEPARTED, JESPERSON DASHED OFF A LETTER TO Mr. Harcourt.
“I think it best that Harcourt has no reason to connect us with his ward or her fiancé,” he told me. “Therefore, I shall present myself to him as a fellow aficionado of murder. And as he shows me his collection, it may be that, if he does know something of Adcocks’s death, he’ll give himself away.”
“Won’t he wonder how you’ve heard of it?”
“Not at all. It is quite well-known in certain circles.” He scarcely paused in his writing as he replied, stretching out his other hand and running it down the spines of a stack of journals on the desk beside him, as if he were one of those blind folk who read with their fingertips.
Abstracting one issue, he paused to flip through the pages until he found the one he wanted me to see.
It was a page of letters, with the headline More Solutions to the Ripper Murders. The letter indicated by his finger was signed R. M. Harcourt, The Pines, Harrow. Another, finishing in the next column, bore the name of J. Jesperson, Gower Street.
“So he may know who you are?”
“As you’ll see by the date, this issue is a year old. I was still a mere student of crime and detection then, unknown to the public.” Finished, he sealed the envelope and held it out to me. “Take this to the post office—” He stopped, with a look of chagrin. “Forgive me.”
“For what? I am your assistant.”
“My manner was too peremptory. I should have—”
I cut him off. “If we’re going to work together, you must stop thinking of me as a female who’ll be mortally offended if you forget to say please.”
“It’s not that.”
I waited.
“I advertised for an assistant, not a servant. I hope we can work together as equals.”
“Understood,” I said, not revealing how pleased I felt. “Also understood is that when time is of the essence, politeness can go hang. And the only reason I am still standing here with this letter in my hand, rather than halfway to the nearest post office, is that I don’t know where that is.”
MR. HARCOURT REPLIED WITH AN INVITATION BY RETURN OF POST, SO THE next day found us on the train rattling through the northwestern suburbs of London, at one time a familiar journey to me. Although I had not been in Harrow for more than ten years, it was the scene of my youth, my father having been a classics master at Harrow School until his untimely death.
However, we had lived in the village on the hill, whereas Mr. Harcourt’s house was almost a mile away, in one of the newer developments that had grown up following the extension of the Metropolitan Line.
Jesperson had said nothing in his letter about a companion, and we had decided my role would be that of Inconvenient Female Relative. Naturally, I would have no interest in the collection—indeed, if I knew what it was, I might well be shocked—so while the men were closeted together, I’d be free to conduct my own investigation. Randall had told Miss Bellamy to expect me.
The Pines was a mock-Tudor affair shielded from the road by the two namesakes that gave it a somewhat secretive and gloomy air. But that was nothing compared to the interior of the house. As I stepped across the threshold, I was gripped by panic. I am sensitive to atmospheres, no matter how much I try to blame it on imagination, and what I felt in that hallway was as bad as any haunted house. But it is difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced such things. If I were describing a smell, I could compare it to a tannery, a slaughterhouse, or a sewer. Only someone with no sense of smell could bear to live there.
Fighting the panic, I looked around for distraction. A large, attractive Chinese vase, green and yellow, had been put into service as a stand for umbrellas and walking sticks. Among the curving wooden handles clustering above the open top, the silver-capped walking stick stood out, commanding attention not simply by its different appearance, but by the grim air of menace it exuded, like a low and deadly hiss.
Of course, I knew at once what it was, and felt appalled. How could they have kept it? Why hadn’t it been broken and destroyed, the wood burnt to ash, the silver head melted down to be remade into something new?
Tearing my horrified gaze away, I spotted the hideous stone gargoyle crouching like a demon near the foot of the stairs, and shuddered at its baleful look before my partner’s light touch on my arm recalled me to the present as he introduced me to the owner of these things.
Mr. Harcourt was a portly, balding man with a luxuriant and well-tended moustache, and—for me, at any rate—a cold and fishlike stare. There was more warmth, and a twitch of a smile, in the greeting he gave Jesperson, leaving me in no doubt that my presence was unwelcome.
Relief came swiftly in the form of a young lady descending the stair. Slender and dark-haired, with a face that was handsome rather
than pretty, she was dressed like a shop assistant or office worker in a crisp, white shirtfront and plain dark skirt. Even smiling warmly in welcome, she had a serious look, her eyes haunted by worry.
“Flora! Exquisite timing, as ever. Although if you had known to expect company you would have worn one of your pretty dresses, I hope,” said Harcourt. He performed hasty introductions and rapidly withdrew with Jesperson behind a solid oak door, leaving us alone in the hall with its sinister atmosphere.
“Perhaps you’d like to see the garden,” said Miss Bellamy, touching my elbow to guide me along a corridor toward the back of the house. As I passed through the door, leaving the house, the taste of open air was almost intoxicating.
“You are sensitive,” she remarked, leading away from the cold back wall of the house, through an arbor, along a path, into a sheltered rose garden.
“I claim no special powers,” I said, “but the atmosphere in that house is . . . extraordinary. I have to wonder how you can live there.”
She nodded slightly. “And yet, you know, most people feel nothing. Mr. Adcocks never did. Mr. Randall’s mood alters when he visits, and I am aware of his unease, yet he will not admit it.”
Although I had not said so to Jesperson, I had toyed with the idea that Miss Bellamy herself might be the killer we sought. The manner of Mr. Adcocks’s death seemed to indicate an attack by a strong and brutal man, an action impossible by most women; nevertheless, I had found that men tended to underestimate the female sex quite as much as they idealized it, and I could imagine a grieving fiancée who was in truth a coldhearted murderer.
But that idea vanished to nothing as soon as I set eyes on her, a slip of a girl, and as we sat down, side by side, on a curving bench in a sunny green spot, the scent of roses and the warm hum of bees filling the air around us, I was utterly certain that this gentle, soft-spoken woman, so concerned about the feelings of others, was incapable of killing another human being, by any means.
“How can you bear to live in that house?” I asked her.
“Don’t forget, I’ve lived there nearly all my life,” she said. “People can get used to almost anything. Imagine someone who must work in a slaughterhouse every day.”
“I imagine such a person would be brutalized and degraded by his work,” I replied. “If the comparison were to someone who must live in a slaughterhouse . . . well, I can’t imagine many who would stick it for long. I’m surprised you never ran away. What was it like when you first came here? Were you terrified?”
She looked thoughtful. “I can’t remember anything before I came here. I was not yet two years old. And back then, Mr. Harcourt’s collection was only small. It grew along with me. Over the years, as he added items, he told me the story of each one. So I became accustomed to tales of violent death and human wickedness from an early age. I was not at all attracted to those things, but I accepted their existence. Imagine a child growing up in a madhouse or a prison. Even the strangest situations become normal if one knows nothing else.”
“But now, at last, you can escape,” I said. “Have you set a date for your wedding?”
She stared at me. “Surely William told you? I think it’s best we don’t even speak of an engagement until after I’m of age, and can leave here.”
“You believe your guardian doesn’t wish you to marry?”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Oh, I believe he would like to see me married! A wife and a widow in the same day would please him very much!”
There was no point in beating about the bush. “Do you think he killed Mr. Adcocks?”
She did not flinch. “No. Despite his fascination with the subject, Mr. Harcourt is no murderer.”
“Do you suspect someone else?”
She did not reply. I thought I saw something cornered and furtive in her look. “Miss Bellamy,” I said gently, “however painful this is, we can’t help unless you tell me what it is you suspect, or fear, no matter how slight or strange. Were you there, did you see anything, when Mr. Adcocks was attacked?”
She shook her head. “I bid him good night and went up to my room. I thought he was safe . . .”
“And your guardian?”
“He was shut into his room, as usual.”
I looked toward the house, but the ground floor was shielded from my view by shrubs and foliage. “Is there another exit? From his room?”
“No. And I would not have missed the sounds if he’d left the house.”
“Who murdered Mr. Adcocks?” I asked suddenly.
“No one.”
“And yet he is dead.”
“He was killed by a powerful blow to his head. The blow came from a walking stick. Can it be called murder, is it even a crime, without human intervention?”
I had seen objects levitate, hover, move about, even shoot through the air as if hurled with great force although no one was near. Usually, there was trickery involved; but not always. I had seen what I believed to be the effect of mind over matter, and also witnessed what was called poltergeist—the German for “noisy spirit”—activity. Yet I was deeply suspicious of everything attributed to the action of “spirits.” I had yet to encounter anything that was not better explained by the power of the human mind.
“What are you saying?” I asked her gently. “You believe that the stick, an inanimate object, moved, and killed a man, of its own volition?” Yet even as I asked, the memory of the malignant power I had sensed in that very stick, only a few minutes earlier, made me much less certain that I was right.
“Have you ever heard of a deodand?”
“I’m not familiar with the word.”
“It’s a term from old English law: deo, to God, dandum, that which must be given. It referred to any possession which was the immediate cause of a person’s accidental death. The object was then forfeit to the Crown, to be put to some pious use.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and she smiled. “That walking stick was a deodand. Not officially; it’s hardly that old. But it was the proximate cause of death to a young man almost seventy years ago—so my guardian told me.
“And the unpleasant stone gargoyle beside the stair? It fell off the tower where it had been placed many centuries before, and killed a mother and child.
“My guardian collects such things, along with his morbid keepsakes from actual murders.
“He gave Archie that stick, knowing what it was, and suspecting what it would do.” She stopped and passed a hand across her brow. “What am I saying? Of course he didn’t suspect. Why should he? None of them had ever hurt him, or me. Not even when I was a child who played with whatever took my fancy—he wouldn’t let me touch anything dangerous, of course, nothing sharp or breakable. I whispered secrets in the gargoyle’s ear, even used to kiss it, and it was that gargoyle—” She stopped, her hand to her mouth.
I waited for her to go on.
“It was in the wrong place, too near the stair. I thought perhaps, when the maid washed the floor, she’d pushed it out, but she insisted she never did. Yet it was not where it usually was, and that’s why Archie stumbled against it, and wrenched his ankle.
“It happened again, just a few days ago, to Will. He fell over it, and if I hadn’t caught him, he might have struck his head, might have been killed, just like Archie!”
“Someone moved it,” I said, trying to inject a note of reason. “If not the maid, then your guardian, or a mysterious stranger. And if Mr. Randall’s stumble had resulted in a serious injury, even death, that would have been an accident; no one could possibly call it murder, even if someone moved the gargoyle.
“But that stick . . . I really can’t imagine that a stick, in Mr. Adcocks’s possession, could have caused his death without the intervention of another person. If you think your guardian was controlling it, willing it to strike—”
“No! Why would he do that? Even if he had the ability, why would he want to kill my fiancé when he was looking forward to seeing how I would cause his death
?”
She had gone white except for two hectic splashes of red in her cheeks. I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course not. Because you don’t understand that I, too, am a deodand. I am the gem of his collection. My early history explains why he took me in. I killed my entire family before I was two years of age.”
I gripped her hands. “Miss Bellamy—”
“I am utterly sane,” she said calmly. “I am not hysterical. These are the facts. Being born, I brought about the death of my mother.”
“That’s hardly—”
“Unique? I know. Listen. Nine months later, my father was taking his motherless children on holiday when we were involved in a railway accident. In the crash, my brother, a child of two, was thrown to the floor, as was I. I landed directly on top of him, a fact which may have saved me from injury, but caused his death. I have never known whether he died of suffocation, or if my weight broke his neck.”
“No one could call that your fault,” I said, trying not to dwell on the image.
“I know that,” she said, pulling her hands away. “Believe me, I am not such a fool as to think it was anything other than extremely bad luck. I have had many years to come to terms with my past. I do not require your pity. I tell you this so you may understand Mr. Harcourt’s interest in me.
“My father was injured in the accident. Some months later he was still in an invalid chair, needing a nurse to help him in and out and wheel him about. We’d gone out for a walk—when I say ‘we’I mean my father in his chair pushed by his nurse, a young man, and I in my pram, pushed by mine, a pretty young woman. We stopped at a local beauty spot to admire the view. My nurse put me down on a blanket on the grass, near to my father, who was dozing in the sun, and then I suppose they must have stopped paying much attention to anything but each other as they fell to flirting. I hadn’t yet learned to walk, but I was getting better at standing up, and as I hauled myself to my feet, using my father’s chair as support, somehow I must have let off the brake—maybe the nurse hadn’t properly set it—and as he rolled away, I just watched him go, picking up speed, until I saw the chair carrying my last living relative go over the edge of the cliff, and carry him to his death on the rocks below.”
Down These Strange Streets Page 39