The Penny Dreadful Curse (23 page)

What was even
more extraordinary, continued the doctor, wheezing asthmatically
with each breathy intake, Mrs Dicksen had convinced the baronet
that men of standing in the community need to lead by example where
religious tolerance is concerned, particularly in times of
heightened uncertainty, such as now, where Jews such as Mr
Panglossian are possibly being singled out for persecution by some
murderous madman who is going about killing authoresses in order to
ruin him. She reminded Sir Marmaduke it had been
his
theory
that someone was out to destroy the Jewish publisher and she
further reminded him of the dark stain on his family’s history
regarding the persecution of Jews. A subtle woman, our Mrs Dicksen,
pronounced the doctor, panting heavily. So invitations had also
been issued to Mr Merlin Panglossian and his married daughter, who
is currently visiting from London, whose name he did not know.
These invitations had been personally delivered by Sir Marmaduke’s
valet.

“Mrs Miriam
Ashkenazy.”

“What?” The
doctor stopped to process the unknown moniker.

“The name of
Mr Panglossian’s daughter is Mrs Miriam Ashkenazy,” she explained.
“I met her this afternoon when I called in at Foss Bank House to
try to wheedle a list of noms de plume from the publisher.”

“Were you
successful?” the doctor quizzed hopefully, pulling out a large
handkerchief and blowing his nose.

“Alas! I
endured a rather a dramatic dressing down. Mr Panglossian is very
touchy on the subject of race and religion. His daughter on the
other hand is quite delightful, a touch naïve according to him;
about the same age as I. She has a child, Rebecca, adopted, and a
husband who has decamped to the Levant with his mistress, much to
papa’s relief. I cannot wait for the fireworks.”

“How do you
know there will be fireworks?”

“Trust me,
there will be fireworks!”

“How is the
investigation coming along?” enquired Reverend Finchley as the
party of four bumped along in the brougham. “Are you making any
progress?”

“Not really,”
admitted the doctor, sounding disheartened. “To have a sixth death
in the Shambles right under our noses has undermined my confidence
considerably. I cannot see how we can ever stop this madman. We
still don’t even have a list of author’s names from Panglossian. I
think Inspector Bird may need to step in and apply duress.”

“Do you think
the inspector has allowed himself to be intimidated by Mr
Panglossian?” asked the deacon.

“That’s a
possibility,” conceded Dr Watson, “but at the risk of sounding like
I am making excuses, the inspector has had several other issues to
deal with. There was the death of the young boy in the
Shambles…”

“He has not
even looked into that,” reminded the Countess frostily.

“True,” agreed
the doctor, “but there was the case of the collision of two barges
which resulted in arson and a violent feud that has since spread
among the bargemen. It has taken precedence over the murders of the
authoresses.”

“And Miss
Titmarsh,” said Miss Flyte with an angelic smile.

“Oh, yes, and
Miss Titmarsh,” said the doctor, aiming a grateful glance at the
lovely young woman seated opposite. “And to complicate matters, the
inspector appears to have stumbled on a valuable fact that has set
us back while chasing up the barge feud.”

“What fact?”
pressed the Countess, this was the first she had heard of it.

“Well, it has
to do with the witness to the fifth murder,” said the doctor,
wondering if he should be discussing the case in front of
outsiders.

“The bargeman
who found the body under the jetty?” pursued the Countess, who
apparently had no such qualms. “And who saw the man on the bridge
going back and forth?”

“Yes.”

“What about
him?” she insisted.

“Well, this is
in strict confidence, but it appears our man is not as reliable as
he made himself out to be. According to other bargemen our man is a
heavy drinker and the drink has affected his memory. It’s quite
likely he wasn’t even sleeping on his barge when he claims he heard
the body go into the river. Several bargemen whom the inspector
questioned with regard to the arson vow they didn’t see a barge
moored at the jetty that night. They claim the man was downstream
unloading some contraband. So either he is confused about the dates
or he is lying to cover himself. Either way, his testimony
regarding the date and time are now questionable. And that throws
into doubt his testimony about the man acting suspiciously on the
bridge, which provided us with our only eye-witness description of
the killer.”

“When you
spoke to him,” asked the Countess, “did he seem confused?”

“Not really,”
said the doctor, thinking back.

“Being a
medical man of longstanding would make you a good judge of such
things, surely?” interceded Reverend Finchley.

The doctor
nodded firmly. “I believe I am attuned to such things and though
the man had gin on his breath he did not display the usual symptoms
of a dipsomaniac. What’s more, years of working alongside Mr
Sherlock Holmes have made me canny to prevarications, deceptions
and criminal subterfuges. I can usually tell when a man is
embellishing the truth.”

“I wish
I
could tell when a man is embellishing the truth,”
interposed Miss Flyte in a tone of heightened interest and
self-abnegation. “I can never tell when a man is lying.”

“That is
easy,” said the Countess, tongue in cheek, “his lips are
moving.”

Everyone
laughed, though the joke was not original. The two men laughed
loudest, keen to prove they could laugh at themselves. The joke
also served to lighten the moment and everyone hoped it was
precursor to a jolly evening. All four were in good spirits,
looking forward to a wonderful dinner in comfortable surroundings
with jovial company. The absence of Mr Dicksen added to their
lightness of being.

“But japes
aside,” continued Miss Flyte, “how
can
you tell if a man is
lying?”

“There are
several tell-tale signs,” replied the doctor knowledgeably. “A man
tends to blink more often…”

Reverend
Finchley turned bright red. The fact the other three avoided
eye-contact only added to his embarrassment. “I have been a blinker
all my life,” he said bluntly. “It is caused by a nerve spasm. It
does not always signify lying. I am also sensitive to bright
light.”

“Of course,”
said Dr Watson quickly, feeling frightfully sorry, “I was speaking
generally, not specifically.”

“There is also
gilding the lily
,” said the Countess to divert attention
away from the deacon. “It is when a person tends to add lots of
detail to make the lie sound more plausible. Did your man gild the
lily, Dr Watson?”

“No, as a
matter of fact he did not. He was vague about the description of
the man on the bridge. He did not say the man had a scar on his
left cheek or was wearing a deerstalker hat, that sort of thing.
And he was vague about the time the body went into the river
because it was foggy and there was no moon but he could recall
voices, laughter and loud talking, saying it was the usual way when
theatre-goers make their way home down Tower Street. And the detail
about the man going back and forth across the bridge, timing
himself, seemed genuine. Why would he invent a thing like
that?”

“You did not
prompt him?” quizzed the Countess.

“Certainly
not!”

“A man who is
telling untruths often avoids eye-contact,” said Reverend Finchley.
“And fidgets nervily.”

“Unless he is
a practised liar,” countered the Countess, “then he looks you
directly in the eye and swears he is telling the truth.”

“Oh, dear,”
groaned Miss Flyte, “truth and untruth sound impossible to tell
apart! How does a detective or a churchman or a journalist know
which is which!”

A fashionable
row of terrace houses, as fine as anything to be found in
Belgravia, with an enviable outlook across the Museum Gardens,
loomed into view and the young women’s earnest question was never
resolved. The pumpkin coloured brougham with the Mallebisse crest
pulled up behind the burgundy carriage belonging to Mrs Dicksen and
a liveried Negro footman emerged from one of the terraces to help
the ladies step down. A hall porter, also Negro, was waiting in the
entrance hall to relieve them of their accoutrements, after which a
butler, likewise negroid, ushered them to the principal drawing
room on the level known as the piano nobile, distinguished by the
largest of the sash windows. Sweet and dry sherry was being served
by a Negress wearing a black uniform with a starched white apron
when the butler returned to announce the arrival of the final two
dinner guests, Mr Merlin Panglossian and Mrs Miriam Ashkenazy.

It was a
disparate gathering of individuals with little in common, be it
class, culture, religion, occupation, and just about everything
else, and the night could easily have turned into an unmitigated
social experiment gone wrong signified by stilted conversation,
awkward silences, heated arguments, flares of temper and
embarrassments galore, but for the drawing room. Yes, the drawing
room. It gave everyone something to focus on and the conversation
bubbled along like one of Mr Hiboux’
pots au feu
.

There was the
African drum being used as a coffee table, the lion skin with head
and teeth and tail and claws intact by the hearth, the Zulu tribal
spears above the fireplace, the African masks on the mantle and the
strange wooden idols dotting the furniture. Everywhere one turned
there was an African object d’art to inspire conversation and in
the midst of it all was Sir Marmaduke, adventurer, collector,
safari expert, positively glowing as he parlayed anecdotes and
recounted tales of derring-do, mopping his sweaty brow as he
fielded questions left, right and centre. His gruffness actually
hid a shy persona and as is so often the case with lack of
confidence in big men it is masked by bravado and a pompous voice.
Once this fact was grasped by the guests they warmed to their host
even more.

The dining
room was also decorated with African artefacts which offered plenty
of scope to avoid topics such as the five murdered authoresses, the
gruesome death of the boy in the Shambles, and the recent death of
Miss Titmarsh, a close personal friend of Mrs Dicksen. The
customary practice of women retiring to the music room and the men
remaining around the dining room table where port and cigars would
be passed round allowed for more contentious conversation to be
broached.

“Are you
making headway with these damnable murders, what?” posed mine host
to Dr Watson as he handed him the port decanter, not realizing he
was throwing a lighted fire-cracker into what had been a pleasant
evening thus far.

“Not really,”
admitted the doctor despondently. “And I discovered just this
afternoon that the only person able to offer a description of the
possible killer is unreliable.”

“What about
the death of Miss Titmarsh?” pursued the deacon, blinking at the
shards of bright light shooting from the multi-tiered chandelier.
“Was the lady’s death related to the other five? Or was it
robbery?”

“It wasn’t
robbery,” asserted the doctor confidently. “Nothing was stolen. The
cash box was intact, her jewellery collection was untouched, and
apart from a silver photo frame, which was also untouched, there
was nothing else worth stealing. The killer was most likely waiting
for her at the top of the stairs when she returned from the Minerva
late in the evening. The fellow was a brute. The lady was punched
in the throat before being pushed down the stairs.”

“Crikey,
that’s appalling, what!”

“How did the
brute gain entry without anyone spotting him in the Shambles?”
quizzed the deacon, shielding his face from the shooting light.

“It appears he
came through the back yard, through the scullery window. He went to
some bother to move the china from the draining board and to clean
his muddy footprints from it too. He also took pains to lock the
window after himself.”

“If he locked
the window how did he leave, what?” asked their host.

“He left via
the front door which still had the key in the lock on the
inside.”

Mr Panglossian
scratched his dark helmet hair. “Why didn’t the brute leave the
same way he came? As the deacon said, he risked being spotted in
the Shambles.”

“I hazard a
guess,” replied the doctor circumspectly. “It was late at night.
Most people had closed their curtains. The killer also wanted to
make the death appear like an accident, hence the need to make it
appear as if no one had entered the premises in the first place.
But the mud on the draining board and the bruise to the throat gave
him away. The latter must have been done impulsively, possibly to
stop the lady screaming or calling out his name.”

“Calling out
his name?” said Mr Panglossian sceptically.

“It is
possible she may have recognized her killer or even known him
personally.”

“That seems
unlikely,” challenged the publisher.

“Was the lady
known to be an authoress, what?” asked their host, passing round
the cigar box, a keepsake from Africa carved from aromatic wood
inlaid with ivory.

Dr Watson
aimed a confrontational glance at Panglossian as he selected a fat
Cuban cigar. “That question remains unanswered at present.”

Panglossian
squared his rounded shoulders as best he could and went into
battle. “Noms de plume are confidential. How often must I state
this? You cannot protect every author in York. It is folly to think
you can. The authors themselves will be aware of the danger and
they will take precautions to safeguard themselves. Besides, if the
noms de plume don’t come with real names attached – which they
don’t - the list is useless to you. It is your job to catch the
killer, not to protect every single writer in the city. You are
clutching at straws because you have overlooked some vital
clue.”