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SIDNEY GRICE FOLDED his arms.
‘You were never on that train,’ he said. ‘As soon as you realized what had happened, you wrote to your brother to send you a telegram. I imagine you said that you wanted an excuse to visit home. There is always a weak link in every story and it usually centres on the over-abundance of evidence provided. Most people asked to prove where they had been would have some difficulty in doing so, unless they were with a large group of acquaintances. They do not usually get pretty French maids to purchase their tickets and cause confusion about the price, ensuring that the seller remembers the transaction. Nor do they stagily draw attention to themselves with the guard on both legs of the journey. Nor do they manage to retain their tickets on a morning when the barriers were fully manned by inspectors. There is so much filling in the sandwich of your story that the bread cannot contain it. John Smith.’
Hesketh looked blank. ‘Who, sir?’
‘The West Coast Railway guard,’ I reminded him, though I suspected I did not need to do so.
‘A common enough name,’ Mr G remarked. ‘But, armed with the information that his parents were Alfred Smith and Mabel Smith née Lineker, the unsung Birth Certificate Investigators, Serpett and Fritt of Goodge Street, were able to ascertain that the Smiths were cursed with five children – the irksomely named John and two other boys, Harold and William, who according to their simple headstone at Nunhead Cemetery were taken by the angels in infancy.’
‘I am not sure where this is going.’ I stretched my back.
‘Then listen and learn.’ My guardian brought out his snuffbox. ‘Their firstborn child was a girl, as was the third, and the Smiths let their imaginations run amok with their selection of feminine names. The first was registered as Angela Smith, born on ninth of April 1837, and the second as Ann, who became a seamstress. Angela, on the other hand, went to work as a maid with her mother in the house of a Mr and Mrs John Weaver. To pander to the impatience of my audience, I shall reveal that Mr Froume, the Marriage Detective, has discovered that Miss Angela Smith gave herself in wedlock to a Signor Juan Innocenti, newly escaped from the dreary backwater of Madrid.’
Hesketh was clutching the table edge, his fingerplate beds squeezed crimson with blanched tips.
‘This marriage was fruitless, however, and Mr Innocenti’s fancy was taken by Angela’s sister, the more youthful and buxom Ann, who, falling prey – as foolish girls are prone – to the oleaginous unctuousness which passes for charm in Hispanic quarters, eloped with him to vilest Paris of all places, some five months and two days after his wedding to Angela.’ Sidney Grice opened the box and tipped it upside down, but nothing fell out of it. ‘What could the hapless Angela do? She decided to use her one skill, capitalize on her marital name, imitate her recently departed husband’s accent and present herself as Senorita Angelina, there being an unaccountable craving for Spanish maids amongst an alarming proportion of domestic employers.’
‘But she was the mad woman who came through the ceiling,’ Easterly realized at last.
‘She was not mad,’ Hesketh insisted fiercely.
‘She was certainly unusual,’ I remarked.
‘After a brief employment with Mrs Thum, the wife of an engineer, Angelina Innocenti found employment with Mrs Peters, a widow of number 32 Burton Crescent. It was while working there that she met a handsome young valet by the name of Austin Hesketh,’ Sidney Grice narrated.
‘How can you know that?’ I asked.
‘By looking through what you found too tedious with which to trouble yourself, Mrs Garstang’s household accounts. She slipped various pieces of paper into it – some of the larger receipts, a few recipes for her cook to try and a note on the back of Angelina Innocenti’s character reference that she was also vouched for by Hesketh.’ Mr G spread his hands. ‘You cannot vouch for someone who you do not know.’
‘She was a good maid,’ Hesketh said. ‘Mrs Garstang was always very happy with her and thanked me for my recommendation.’
‘To skip merrily backwards a few paces,’ Mr G walked his first two fingers in mid-air, ‘nearly a year after taking employment with Mrs Peters, and some months after meeting Austin Hesketh, Angelina Innocenti left, only to return six months later to the same household.’
‘Do you know why Angelina left number 32?’ I asked, and Hesketh rubbed his jaw.
‘To look after her sick mother, as I remember it.’
‘A mother who was so sick that she was still working for the Weavers and did so until the day she died some five years later.’ Grice’s fingers twirled a polka.
‘I can think of only one other reason young girls disappear temporarily,’ I said carefully, and Easterly scratched his armpit.
‘It was to have a child,’ Hesketh confessed. ‘My son, Danny. But I am sure Mr Grice has seen the birth certificate. I could not have him registered as a bastard and so I put both our names on it.’
‘But she was married to hanother man.’ Easterly edged away as if he thought adultery might be contagious.
‘Only in the strictest letter of the law,’ Hesketh assured him. ‘There was nothing we could do about that. But we took our marriage vows and exchanged rings in a quiet side chapel of St George’s, and I truly believe that we were man and wife in God’s eyes.’
‘Hi knew you would do the right thing, Mr Hesketh.’ The footman settled back towards him.
‘But how did you and Angelina manage to meet?’ I tried not to sound prurient.
‘When she was here it was easy,’ Hesketh admitted. ‘There were ladders into the roof space and we could meet halfway or sometimes take the risk of going into each other’s rooms.’ He avoided my eye. ‘Before she came to work for the Garstangs she would climb in through the cellar at the back of the north wing.’ Hesketh puffed up his cheeks. ‘I got keys cut for the side gate and the cellar and hid them behind the ivy in the garden wall.’
‘Where some time after her escape last December, Angelina Innocenti discovered Daniel Filbert’s body,’ Sidney Grice surmised. ‘The cellar had a false floor to raise it clear of the old cesspit and lime was poured through a trapdoor to get rid of the stench, but the planks had rotted away by the time the fugitive climbed in there.’
‘So that was why he was found so soon after she had escaped from Broadmoor,’ I speculated. ‘She must have panicked and run out, leaving the gate and cellar flaps open and Danny’s body on display to that family who went seeking shelter.’
‘Senorita Innocenti was a determined woman,’ Mr G narrated. ‘She may have been frightened but that didn’t stop her from returning, and getting into that loft.’
‘Dear lord in heaven,’ Hesketh breathed. ‘She must have been coming back for me.’
‘But why did she not approach you?’ I asked.
‘For the same reason that she abused Veronique – because she saw Hesketh with her and assumed the worst,’ Mr G expounded. ‘On top of which she had unfinished business with me.’
‘The old woman who threw a horse dropping.’ I wriggled my toes. ‘Do you think she caused the gas explosion to try to kill you?’ I had an itch in my left foot and it would not go away.
‘It would be pretty to think so.’ Sidney Grice fluttered his long eyelashes. ‘But our senorita was not in the house at the time and it is difficult to conceive how she could have timed the explosion to coincide with our appearance.’ He clacked his teeth as if trying a new set out. ‘More likely she fractured a pipe on one of her visits whilst getting out of the cellar. The stairs would have been in a very poor condition and she may have grabbed it to steady herself.’
I kicked the sole of my left foot with the toe of my right but it did not help. ‘And your son,’ I asked Hesketh, ‘what happened to him?’
‘Danny was brought up by a Mr and Mrs Filbert in Woodcutters Road,’ Hesketh said. ‘We gave them money towards his keep, but it must have cost them more than that to look after him. They were good foster-parents or we should not have left him there. They lent him their surname but kept his Christian name.’
‘But how did you get the money for his funeral?’ I wriggled my toes desperately. ‘That was an expensive coffin and headstone.’
‘Angelina came into some money from a relative,’ Hesketh replied. ‘She gave five hundred pounds to me to look after because I could keep it locked in my pantry.’
‘When was that?’ I asked.
‘About thirty years ago,’ he told me. ‘We were saving it for when we could live openly as man and wife.’
‘How very convenient.’ My godfather tapped the bottom of his snuffbox but nothing fell out.
‘It is the truth,’ Hesketh contended.
‘I have small doubt that you believe it to be so.’ Mr G put the box back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘But – as the auditing of his accounts shows – on the fourth of May anno Domini 1855, Mr Holford Garstang paid five hundred pounds cash to an undisclosed recipient.’
‘Just before Danny was born,’ I remembered.
‘But why would he do that?’ Hesketh looked truly bewildered.
‘One only maintains a child through love or duty,’ Mr G said.
Hesketh made as if to rise. ‘He was my son,’ he insisted fiercely.
‘Oh, Hesketh,’ I said sadly. ‘It is not difficult to imagine why Mr Garstang might believe a child was his and have paid to avoid a scandal.’
‘No!’ Hesketh’s face drained with fury. ‘Angelina was not like that. She was a good girl.’
‘So good that she never gave herself to you before you underwent that sham of a ceremony?’ Mr G persisted.
‘That was different,’ Hesketh raged. ‘We were in love and our marriage was not a sham, unlike the one Angelina went through with her so-called husband.’
‘Who would have thought it – other than I?’ Sidney Grice adjusted his eye. ‘Beneath this courteous, calm and dignified valet’s polished veneer of polite servitude seethes a molten magna of passions.’
‘You are making vile accusations against the woman I loved, the woman I have just seen die violently and…’ Hesketh’s voice trailed off.
‘There are some indisputable facts,’ I pointed out as evenly as I could. ‘Mr Garstang gave five hundred pounds to somebody just before Angelina gave the same amount to you.’
Hesketh hung his head. ‘I did think it odd about the money,’ he admitted eventually.
‘That would mean Daniel was –’ I did a quick sum – ‘only seventeen when he died.’ I checked my maths and could not quite believe it. ‘But he looked so much older.’
‘Death and quicklime do not flatter the complexion.’ Sidney Grice touched his cheek. ‘Daniel Filbert’s body was unwittingly preserved by his friend Nathan and then partially burned by the lamentable Crepolius Snushall. He was not going to keep his youthful freshness.’
‘Stop it.’ Hesketh fought for breath. ‘Please, Mr Grice.’
‘So when you realized that Nathan Mortlock had murdered your son you decided to kill him,’ I surmised.
Hesketh swallowed. ‘I sent Veronique to purchase a train ticket when I was supposed to be packing a bag, and misled her about the cost so that she would make a fuss and be remembered, then nobody could accuse her of lying about getting it for me,’ he admitted.
‘So John Smith, the guard who gave you your alibi, was your common-law wife’s brother,’ I recapitulated. ‘What happened next?’
‘While Veronique was at her task, I took Mr Nathan’s clothes from his wardrobe and hid them in Mrs Mortlock’s room, but the wardrobe was still half full with her clothes so I took the rest to Miss Charity’s room. Then I went downstairs and smelled the stew, saying what a pity it was I did not have time to enjoy it and pouring a bottle of Mr Nathan’s laudanum in.’
‘Which is why Easterly overslept,’ I recollected, ‘and Constable Harris fell asleep after he had eaten some.’
Hesketh nodded. ‘Mrs Emmett was serving up when I went down to say I was leaving. I had a spoonful to check and the opium was undetectable. The alcohol evaporates and nobody could have tasted the residue, with Mrs Emmett’s fondness for salt and pepper. The others were settling down to eat, so I arranged I would put the keys through the letterbox for Mrs Emmett to collect when she had eaten. It was against Mr Nathan’s strict instructions but I told her to enjoy her dinner and persuaded her he would never know, but that I would take responsibility if he ever found out.’
‘You never left the house,’ I realized. ‘You put the keys in the letterbox and sneaked back upstairs.’
‘I stropped the blade to make it as blunt as possible. He was not going to have the clean death he had denied the Garstangs. Then I put on one of my master’s shirts and a pair of trousers, and hid in his wardrobe with my own clothes folded beside me and a laundry bag.’
‘You don’t have to tell them this, Mr Hesketh,’ Easterly protested.
‘They know, Easterly.’ Hesketh patted the young footman’s arm. ‘If I deny it much longer Inspector Quigley will decide to question Miss Charity, and I cannot allow that.’
‘How did you feel as you waited for Mr Mortlock to go to bed?’ I asked and Mr G huffed. He was not keen on feelings.
‘In a turmoil.’ Hesketh clamped his right hand to his temple. ‘My mind was spinning. I could not believe I had gone that far, and I had almost decided to give up and rush to put everything back when I heard him come in and get ready for bed. I could see his bedside lamp through a crack in the woodwork and by the rustling I think he was reading in bed. Then the oddest thing happened. I dozed off.’
‘It happens sometimes in times of extreme stress,’ I recollected. ‘I have heard of a cavalryman falling off his horse because he went to sleep just before a charge.’
Hesketh put his other hand up to his head. ‘When I awoke it was quiet and I had no idea how long I had been like that. I waited and listened until I heard a snore but, when I pushed the door open a crack, it creaked. It had never done that before.’
‘Probably your weight distorting the frame,’ I suggested.
Sidney Grice had his pencil in his hand but the notebook stayed closed.
‘Mr Nathan woke up as I climbed out.’ Hesketh was clutching his temples. ‘He sat up and called out Who’s there? And then, in great relief, Oh, it’s you, Hesketh, and lay back again. He must have been confused with his night draught or he would have wondered why I was there. I just said yes and climbed on to the bed, and he said sleepily, What are you doing? And that is when I nearly ran away. He trusted me. It never occurred to Mr Nathan that I could mean him any harm.’ Hesketh released his temples and took a draught of cold tea. ‘But then I remembered the Garstangs, who had treated him like their own child, and the servants, who had adored him, and my son who thought they were best friends. I do not suppose it ever occurred to any of them that this man would be their murderer. I swung my leg over and pinioned his arms under the sheets. The pain of that woke him up and he cried out Hesketh! in alarm. Be quiet, I hissed.’
‘One cannot hiss words which have no sibilance,’ Mr G contributed usefully.
Hesketh shook that information away. ‘I made a fist in his hair and dragged his head up, wrapped the cord twice round his neck and pulled it tight. Mr Nathan went puce almost immediately; his eyes bulged and his tongue protruded, and I thought I had killed him too soon. But, when I relaxed my noose, he sucked in the air with a huge gasp. Listen, I said, very carefully. If you tell me the truth I shall let you live. If you lie, you will never see the dawn. How did you kill the Garstangs? He denied it at first, of course, but I became expert very quickly in applying just the right amount of choking pressure to make him think he was going to die. It must have taken an hour or more, but I got the truth out of him eventually.
‘And what about Danny? I asked.
‘Oh, him. Mr Nathan obviously thought I only really cared about the household. I strangled him in the basement and pushed him into the quicklime they were trying to clean the old cesspit with. And it was then that I told him. Daniel Filbert was my son. I showed him the razor and he opened his mouth to scream for help but I put my hand over his mouth and nose, forced him back into his pillow and dug the edge of the blade in just below his Adam’s apple.’ Hesketh mimed the actions, unconsciously, I suspected. ‘When I took my hand away, his scream wasn’t muffled any more. It just came out as a hiss.’
‘Correct use of the voiceless fricative that time,’ Sidney Grice approved.
‘Where did you learn that from?’ I asked and Hesketh screwed up his nose.
‘When I was a child I had a dog called Sally. Her barking vexed a neighbour so he stabbed Sally in the neck. She lived another three years, but the wound didn’t close and she never barked again.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Except when I covered the hole to torment him.’
‘What next?’ I asked, fascinated that Hesketh could almost smile at his memories in the middle of his confession.
‘That was the first cut,’ he said with as small a display of emotion as a man might describe pruning his roses. ‘But there were six stabbings to avenge and I did them very slowly, being careful not to go too deep. And every time I hacked into his flesh I told him: this is for Nancy Seagrove – this is for Brian Watts. Mr Nathan struggled and writhed from side to side, but he was not a strong man and I still am for all my sixty years, and heavy. I nearly killed him too soon with my fourth cut, but it pulled apart just in time for me to see the vein throbbing under the surface. There were two strangulations to account for too – Lionel and Danny. That was why I wrapped the cord round twice. I throttled my master until he almost passed out. His tongue began to swell and his eyes to bleed as they bulged in pain and terror. Then I stopped. I loosened the cord and let him fully regain consciousness. He was mouthing like a landed trout and his lips were saying Hesketh, no, please. I let him see the razor once more. And this is for Angelina, the cut that will kill you, I said. He was hissing and writhing like an injured snake now, and pleading, he was pleading with me. I will show you the same mercy that you showed them, I vowed, and set to work. The razor was really blunt by now and I had to saw hard to get through all the flesh and gristle. I went through the middle as deep as I could because I know the big veins are in the side. He was starting to pass out so I stopped again, but then there was this look. I don’t know what it was – it might just have been the way his hair fell over his forehead – but something in it reminded me of the young Master Nathan and how we used to be, and I was sickened by what we had become. This is it, I told him. Any last words? And I put my finger over the hole but he couldn’t really speak. His throat must have been too damaged by then. But he said something and – between what I thought I heard and what I thought I could read on his lips – it seemed he said Do it.
‘I went through the side and the blood exploded out of him. I loved you, I said, and I think he heard me before the hissing stopped.’
Hesketh’s expression recomposed itself, and he might have been the valet that I had first met, less than two weeks ago, as he spoke on. ‘The shirt was soaked as I knew it would be, and I did not want to ruin Easterly’s clothes as I know how much care he takes with them.’
‘That was very thoughtful of you, Mr Hesketh.’ Easterly brushed his own lapel to support his mentor’s statement.
‘In the midst of savagery is benevolence born,’ Sidney Grice opined but, if that were a quotation, I did not recognize it.
‘So what did you do?’ Was I the only one who appreciated the horror of what we were hearing?
‘I had already prepared a shirt by pouring blood from a joint of beef over it and letting it dry in the butler’s pantry,’ Hesketh revealed. ‘I am the only one who goes in there.’
I could not help but feel a mild satisfaction when I remembered how I deduced that in Quigley’s office.
‘I undressed, washed in Mr Nathan’s stand, poured the slops on to the bed and dried the bowl on the corner of a blanket. Then I put my own clothes back on.’ Hesketh put a hand over his heart. ‘The bloodstained clothes I put into the bag and left them outside the door to be disposed of in the range later on.’
‘Which is why Mrs Emmett smelled burning the next morning and accused Veronique of being careless with the flat iron,’ I remembered.
‘Then I went round the house,’ Hesketh said, ‘putting the shirt in Easterly’s room, the razor in Veronique’s and the key in Mrs Emmett’s. Everybody was fast asleep.’
‘Were you trying to hincriminate Veronique, Mr Hesketh?’ Something sparked inside the footman.
‘No, Easterly,’ Hesketh vowed.
‘Or me?’ Easterly shied like a kicked puppy.
‘I was trying to provide evidence against all of us, including myself with the curtain cord.’
‘All of us?’ Easterly gaped.
‘I thought, if the finger of guilt pointed at everybody, it would point at nobody.’ Hesketh held his brow in his right hand. ‘Anyone accused could rightly point out that there was just as much evidence against everyone else.’
‘And then?’ I pressed.
Hesketh rubbed his forehead. ‘I put the clothes back in the wardrobe. I must have picked up Miss Charity’s glove with the clothes and dropped that stocking in the dark.’
‘You pulled the bolts across with a ribbon, a sample of which snagged on the doorpost.’ Sidney Grice produced an envelope and tipped its contents on to a white page of his notebook. ‘Miss Middleton was not the only one to leave threads on the jamb.’
And I saw that there were three green threads that must have come from my dress and a longer saffron thread curled into an elongated S.
‘I knew you would work out how it had been done when I saw you take that,’ Hesketh admitted. ‘But I still hoped you would not be able to prove it was my doing.’
I could not help but remember another saffron thread, found under the nail of a murdered girl the day I came to London.
Easterly rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his first fingers like a sleepy child. ‘But what hiv Mr Grice decided it was me, Mr Hesketh?’
‘I would not have let you even go to court, Easterly,’ the valet vowed. ‘I have written a full confession and placed it in the hands of Forrester’s, the solicitors at number 16, with instructions that it should be opened in the event of my death or be used as evidence if anyone should be brought to trial for Mr Nathan’s murder.’
‘But surely, if they thought your letter contained evidence, they would be bound to go to the police,’ I objected.
‘I told them it was just character references for all the staff, should they need those,’ Hesketh explained. ‘I would never have let anyone take my place in the dock. You must believe me.’
‘Must we?’ My voice rose. ‘The word of a murderer? I expect Nathan Mortlock believed you when you said you would let him live.’
‘He had no right to the truth,’ Hesketh insisted. ‘And I did not murder him. It was an execution for his many crimes. I shall face my maker with a clear conscience on the last day, while Nathan Mortlock shall roast in hell.’
‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord,’ I quoted. ‘How did you get out of the house?’
‘Through the front window.’ Hesketh leaned back towards it. ‘I unlocked it and scrambled out.’
‘Hence the scraping of boot polish on the front wall,’ my guardian observed.
‘I thought your shoe was slightly scuffed,’ I recalled.
‘The coalman’s wagon was making a delivery to number 28 Burton Crescent, the house next door,’ Hesketh resumed his account, ‘but he had to park outside Gethsemane because of a trench in the road. I remembered that we were due a delivery too and I couldn’t risk him seeing me, so I took a sharp stone and put it under the horse’s tackle. The animal reared up and bolted. It was something we used to do as boys in Nuneaton and what I think Mr Nathan did the day before the slaughter.’
‘There is an agreeable symmetry in that act,’ Mr G approved before reminding me, ‘I instructed you to note water mains repair.’
‘I rang the doorbell and Mrs Emmett let me in,’ Hesketh said. ‘I told her my mother had just had a turn – she had faked one for the doctor, thinking Mr Mortlock might demand proof. Then I went into the sitting room, saying I was checking the decanters.’
‘Hi ham sorry for that, Mr Hesketh,’ Easterly apologized. ‘It was only the occasional nip.’
‘It hardly matters now,’ I reassured him.
‘I put the padlock back on,’ Hesketh recited, ‘and went about my duties. The rest you know.’
‘Indeed.’ Sidney Grice sucked on his pencil as a man might on a cigar. ‘Remember how I said I might give you time with the murderer?’ He tapped off the imaginary ash. ‘Well, Austin Anthony Hesketh, it transpires that you shall be spending the rest of your life with him.’