Terror by Gaslight (14 page)

Harriet looked up and peered around. ‘It’s all right!’ she cried. ‘They’re in place in your desk. In the bottom lock.’

‘What? Let me see.’ He stormed across to the desk and took out the keys. ‘What the deuce are they doing here? I never leave keys in the lock! Damnation! Someone has been meddling at my desk!’

‘I swear I have not touched anything!’

‘I would never suspect you of such a thing, Harriet. But there are people who wish me harm, and are eager to spy on
our affairs.’ A thought struck him. ‘Those infernal detectives who invaded this house last week. Were they ever alone in here?’

‘I think not. I believe either Clare or Mrs Butters was always with them.’

‘Hah. Not that that is much reassurance. One of them may be in league with those interfering knaves. Or, more likely, both of them.’ Austin was looking in all the drawers, checking the contents. ‘I shall be questioning the pair of them. And, by thunder, I’ll get some answers! And from now on, these keys will stay in my pocket. It is outrageous! I am beset by rogues and traitors!’ Austin’s face had gone an alarming shade of red. Harriet watched him anxiously.

‘Please do not upset yourself, Father. You have had so much on your mind lately. Perhaps you forgot for once and left the keys there yourself.’

‘I do not forget things! Not even for once!’ Austin had concluded his search, and he slammed the last drawer shut. ‘Someone has removed a book I had taken from the bookshelf.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘And that was just two days ago. So it cannot have been the detectives.’ He frowned. ‘Unless they have been back here without my knowledge.’

Harriet quickly shifted the focus. ‘Is anything else missing?’

‘I think not. However, some things seem to have been disturbed. It is intolerable that ill-wishers should have been prying into my papers. Well, I shall get to the bottom of this in due course.’

‘I’m sure there’ll be an innocent explanation.’ Harriet continued her attempts at conciliation. ‘Is there anything I could do to help?’

Austin mopped his brow with the handkerchief from his breast pocket. Then his manner softened a little. He had seen an opportunity.

‘Well … as it happens, I am reminded of a more pleasant matter that needs to be dealt with. I had thought we should do this tomorrow but there’s no time like the present.’

He opened the top drawer again and took out a foolscap envelope, from which he withdrew some documents. ‘Some business on your behalf.’

Harriet was surprised. ‘Is it not a little late for business? I’m rather tired, and dinner must soon be ready.’

‘This will take only a moment, Harriet. Simply two papers that require your signature.’

Austin could produce a certain amount of charm when required. It was this, plus his energy and strength, that had persuaded two women to marry him. Now he turned it on his daughter. He smiled and patted her hand.

‘Something attempted, something done will earn a night’s repose,’ he reminded her. ‘Let us get this job out of the way.’

‘Very well, Father. What are these papers?’

‘Just formalities. But they will enhance the value of your trust fund.’

‘You know I do not understand these things.’

‘Of course not. Why should you, when I am here to organize your affairs? Come to the desk here. You can sit in my chair.’

Harriet put down her needlework and did as she’d been told. Her father put a pen in her hand and laid the pages in front of her.

‘Now, just sign here, my dear … good. And here, on the next page … well done. There, that is all the business completed.’

Austin sprinkled sand on the wet signatures from the small glass bowl on his desk. ‘Your work is done, Harriet. You have earned your dinner.’

While Harriet returned to her armchair, Austin tipped the sand off the papers and into the wastepaper bin. Then
he returned the documents to the envelope and put it back in the drawer. He glanced at his daughter.

‘How is your embroidery progressing, my dear?’

‘Oh, quite well, thank you.’

Austin sat at his desk chair and regarded Harriet with what might almost be taken for approval. She had evidently pleased him. ‘You have been working at it very diligently lately,’ he observed.

‘It is one of the few ways in which I can pass the time.’

‘That is only for a while, my dear. Once your strength is restored, you may be able to take up music again.’

With a mixture of excitement and fear, Harriet realized that this was a heaven-sent opportunity to do her duty: a chance that might not come again. Her father seemed almost friendly; at least, he was not actually scowling. And it was he who had brought up the subject of her health.

With her gaze firmly locked on to her needlework, trying to speak lightly in spite of her racing heart, Harriet took the plunge.

‘I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have a healthier activity. Something in the fresh air.’

‘A sensible thought, Harriet. I might get a croquet set for the garden.’

‘That would be enjoyable. But I was thinking of something a little more strenuous.’

‘Strenuous?’

Harriet’s mouth was going dry, but she pressed on. ‘Sometimes on a summer’s day the ponds on the Heath look inviting. It crossed my mind that I might take up bathing.’

‘Bathing? In Highgate Ponds? Highly dangerous! You know the water is deep?’

‘Yes, I have been warned of that. But I’m told they have lifeguards.’

‘Common fellows! I would not want them laying hands on
my daughter. And that is what they would do, if you got into difficulties! It is unthinkable!’

‘Actually, Father, I was hoping you might escort me. I expect you’re a good swimmer.’

All trace of geniality left Austin in a flash.

‘Then you expect wrong! I cannot swim! And, furthermore, I have no wish to. If God had intended man to swim, he’d have given us fins. Put this foolish idea out of your mind, my girl! It is out of the question.’

Harriet felt crushed, and astonished by the violence of his reaction. But she was also a little proud: she had an answer for Major Steele. She hoped he would realize what it had cost her.

As Harriet bent over her embroidery again, Austin rose from his chair and began pacing up and down, complaining to the world in general. ‘Why is my dinner not served on time? And why is there no order in this house?’

Then the door opened, and an anxious Clare came in.

‘I can’t find Mrs Butters,’ she announced. ‘I went to the kitchen to ask about dinner but she’s not there. And the back door is wide open!’

‘Wretched woman!’ said Austin bitterly. ‘She is always leaving that door open. To let the steam out, she says. Not caring that she may be letting thieves in!’

‘But where can she be?’ asked Clare.

‘No doubt she’s in the cellar, sampling the wine.’

‘That’s not fair, she doesn’t do that. I’m worried about her.’

‘You’d do better to worry about yourself, my girl!’ Austin grasped Clare’s arm in an iron grip and glared into her face. ‘I believe you have been meddling at my desk and, if you have, you will be sorry!’ He let go of his daughter and pointed towards the door. ‘But first things first. Go and close the back door at once, and lock it. Then find Mrs Butters and tell her that if dinner is not served at once she will lose a
month’s wages!’

Rubbing her arm, Clare left the room and closed the door behind her.

Austin began pacing back and forth again, and resumed his grumbling. ‘It is not good for the digestion to have to wait for dinner! Why is the woman suddenly failing in her duties?’

‘As Clare told you, I don’t think Mrs Butters is well. She seemed very tired this afternoon.’

‘She should go to sleep earlier, instead of sitting up reading trashy novellas! There is no need for her to be awake after 9.30, once the washing-up is done. The woman has no common sense.’

‘Please do not be too hard on her, Father. She is very kind. Yesterday she offered to find me a new kitten if Ella does not return.’

Austin stopped walking and looked sternly at his daughter. ‘Indeed? Well, do not assume I shall give my permission. You know I am averse to animals in the house.’

‘But surely you would not have me live without a pet?’

‘We shall see. We shall see. But let us have no more talk of swimming.’

Austin sat down wearily at his desk and began writing on a piece of paper. As he did so, the door was thrown open and Clare rushed in, ashen-faced and trembling and struggling for words.

Harriet was shocked. ‘What is it, Clare? Are you all right?’

‘What’s the matter, girl?’ Austin barked. ‘Where is Mrs Butters?’

‘Mrs Butters is lying at the bottom of the cellar steps!’ cried Clare. ‘With her head in a pool of blood!’

The Dunblane coal store was brick built and stood ten yards from the house. Fortunately for the boy, it was to the southwest of the building and was thus somewhat sheltered from
the north wind. Nevertheless, it was bitterly cold, and the boy had no outer coat to combat the freezing winter night. Every few minutes he would exercise his arms and run on the spot to keep his circulation going but it brought scant comfort.

The jagged lumps of coal, which would soon be warming Frankel’s rooms, were at present dead and cold, stacked in a sullen heap that covered most of the floor. The boy had arranged some of the top pieces to form a crude seat for himself. There was nothing else to sit on.

A chipped enamel water jug was on the ground, and the paper bag with the black bread was on the coal beside him. He’d put it there in the hope of protecting it from the rats, which scuttled about the floor from time to time.

The only ventilation came from a small grille at the top of one of the walls. This had been installed many years ago, when a previous owner kept dogs in there. (These days Frankel’s dog slept indoors at night, for extra security.) Luckily, the wall with the grille faced the Highgate Road, so a tiny amount of light filtered in from a street lamp. There was no other illumination.

For a long time at the start of his incarceration the boy had been absorbed in self-pity, an emotion to which he was well entitled. Life had been cruel from the start.

Bad memories of a hostile and drunken woman, who must have been his mother, mingled with visions of various men who came and went in the back rooms of the slum house. Most of the time the men ignored him but sometimes he was kicked or cuffed if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Only the sailor called Joe had shown him any kindness. Joe stayed longer than the others, and took an interest in the boy. He seemed to enjoy telling the lad stories of his adventures at sea and in foreign lands. Joe it was who taught the boy the rudiments of reading.

But one night there’d been a terrible quarrel, and the woman hit Joe with a hammer. The sailor had left the house with his head bleeding, never to be seen again. And then came the day when the woman turned her hammer on the boy, and he too had fled for his life.

After that came jumbled recollections of the turbulent period that followed, when he was living with the street boys, sleeping in doorways, huddled together for warmth, scavenging food from the rubbish outside taverns and eating-houses, begging for money, or stealing the odd coin if the opportunity arose.

There’d been some comradeship in those days but there’d also been fear and violence, with bigger boys always eager to impose their supremacy with fist and boot.

It had seemed like an escape when the prosperous-looking stranger had approached him in the park. The man had been sitting on a bench watching the urchins play football with an old cabbage, found in the gutter after the market closed.

The boy had fallen and cut his knee, so he was still there, trying to wipe off the blood with a handful of grass, when the cabbage disintegrated and the other boys moved off in search of new diversions.

The man had tended the injured knee and asked questions in a friendly voice. Then, when he’d established that the boy had no home and no family, he’d invited him to come and live in his house, and be a servant for sixpence a week.

The boy had jumped at the chance. The idea of living in a house and receiving wages seemed a dream come true. Alas, the reality had proved a bitter disappointment. He’d simply exchanged one grim existence for another. For him, life at Dunblane was a wearisome round of drudgery, accompanied by harsh words, and punctuated by beatings and other humiliations. Furthermore, always under the watchful eyes of three men, he had lost his freedom.

These sad thoughts had filled the boy’s mind for several hours, creating a mood of resignation. The optimism he’d shown Harriet last week was now extinct. He’d begun to accept that misery was his lot in life. He was doomed to suffer. He would sit there shivering in the dark, taking just enough of the cheerless bread and water to stay alive. He’d endure the loneliness and the beatings, and then resume his dreary routine of slavery. It was the line of least resistance.

But then came the stirring of something different. There was within the boy a spark of resilience, a streak of determination, even of pride. On the Heath he’d seen a better side of life. Before the fear caused by the Maniac there’d been happy well-fed people with smiling faces, walking for pleasure, flying kites, playing games. Why shouldn’t he be part of that world?

And then there’d been the girl. She’d smiled at him, let him touch her, treated him as a human being. There might be other girls out there who’d give him smiles and let him touch them.

He’d boasted to this one that he’d escape when the time came. Suddenly, he decided that the time had come. He must get away now.

For a while, when the boy first came to Dunblane, Frankel had paid him the promised sixpence a week. Before long, of course, the doctor had started forgetting, or withholding the wage as a fine. But there’d been occasional tips, including the cat-money. He now had five shillings and fourpence wrapped in a rag and hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the attic.

That might be enough to survive on for a few days, while he found the London docks the sailor had told him about. He could get a job on a ship and sail the seas, like Joe.