Deadly Pleasures Page 6

  The Major gasped, ‘We must hurry! These innocents will swarm out into peril any moment.’ He blew on the carrier bag, still containing the poltergeist, whisking it up in a puff of gesticulating plastic to the roof of Mad Jack’s Tower.

  ‘Ow!’ complained their assistant, screwing himself out into the fresh air.

  ‘Less fuss, varlet!’ ordered Sir Mawdesley. ‘Now, good Major, tell us your plan.’

  Major Rackstraw smoked his long clay pipe as he honed final details and gave everyone their orders of the day; Sir Mawdesley, whose life predated Walter Raleigh, looked on enviously at the Virginian tobacco smoke.

  ‘What about the two men lurking in their carriage?’ asked the White Lady. The man-mad girl never forgot the presence of anything in britches. She took it upon herself to go and inspect them, bringing back news that two figures were still visible, keeping suspiciously low in their seats. ‘As soon as they see they have been thwarted, they will make off at speed. We cannot let them escape!’ Because of her pitiful history, she knew everything about men wanting to escape.

  Sir Mawdesley and the Major admitted the justice of her plea; they tackled the poltergeist. ‘Sprite, we must make these anarchists safe.’

  ‘Do it yourself. I don’t play with central locking.’ Their helper was up-to-date, but bloody-minded.

  ‘Oh, but none of us is as capable as you!’ cooed the White Lady, in the tones of honeyed sincerity that had driven her suitor away. Unused to flattery, the malevolent imp felt confused. He was unhelpful, because his job was to cause human anxiety. But at heart, insofar as he had one, he was thrilled by the idea of locking the bombers in their own car, which was exactly the kind of prank for which he existed. He dashed down to do it. To jam central locking was easy; he even let down all the tyres, for extra devilment. The activists were trapped.

  The rest of the plan went into action at once. The milling visitors in the Buttery were too close to potential danger. Sir Mawdesley manifested himself there, beckoning slowly with an eerie stare, as if summoning the group to a costumed reconstruction of historic laundering. Bemused, they were drawn after him into the safe inner courtyard, expecting dollies, coppers and starch to be demonstrated by a costumed wench.

  Meanwhile, the White Lady preoccupied the guide by pretending to faint. Most guides live for a chance to use their First Aid training, which is so much more rewarding than apprehending misfits who try to walk off with Fabergé eggs from the study. Attempts at giving the kiss of life proved strangely difficult, though the White Lady became hysterical at the sensation upon her previously untouched lips.

  Meanwhile Major Rackstraw made a dramatic appearance at the ticket office, raised his flintlock, stood to and shot the Black Dog. The phantom bullet passed harmlessly through the unkempt beast – but the medieval monster loved to play; he let out a spine-chilling howl, then lay down with his paws in the air and his red eyes closed, for once apparently at rest.

  It worked. ‘That madman shot a dog! Someone call the police!’

  Galvanised by this horror, the custodian rushed into the Gatehouse to telephone. A security guard bravely tried to fell the Roundhead with a rugby tackle, but the radical rebel was impervious to elitist sports.

  Meanwhile high above them, the poltergeist was going to work. He gathered the bomb and all its wires together, teasing the bundle into his carrier bag. Whirling himself into a ball of air, he lifted the handles. He spun upwards, then man-oeuvred the bag high above Mad Jack’s Tower. With a delighted shriek, he jerked his burden over the belvedere. The dangerous package dropped down outside and into the neat moat at the base of the Wardroom, where the castle walls were over ten feet thick.

  The bomb went off.

  Its blast propelled the poltergeist all the way back down Mordaunt Street and into the store again, where he hurtled into more manic spite, spilling strawberry yoghurt on the floor just where the busiest shopping aisles met. As sirens began wailing in the distance, the visitors in the castle courtyard had covered their ears at the roar from the explosion. Once they realised they had so narrowly escaped injury or worse, even stout women in tweed skirts and brogues found themselves trembling.

  By a miracle nobody, alive or dead, had been hurt. Mad Jack’s Tower survived intact. The Dungeon where Major Rackstraw had been a prisoner was the only part of the fabric to sustain damage. The wall where he had carved his name crumbled; all trace of his long misery vanished.

  The White Lady threw herself upon him, full of praise; he managed to free himself. The Black Dog scampered around some bemused policemen who had discovered the bombers locked helplessly in their vehicle and were thinking about arresting them, when they could be extracted.

  Sir Mawdesley Mordaunt, one-time owner of the castle, gazed through the smoke and choking dust as it settled. Only those with the gift to hear him knew that, amazed at the destruction, the ghostly poet murmured, ‘Zounds!’

  MR HALKETT’S HOBBY

  Martin Edwards

  Martin Edwards’ latest Lake District Mystery is The Frozen Shroud. The series includes The Coffin Trail (shortlisted for the Theakston’s prize for best British crime novel), The Arsenic Labyrinth and The Serpent Pool. He has written eight novels about Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin, and two stand-alone novels, including Dancing for the Hangman. He has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and edited twenty-one anthologies.

  ‘Would you care to meet a murderer’s daughter?’

  Stirring in my armchair, I forced my eyes open. The smoking room in The Curiosity Club possesses an agreeably soporific atmosphere. Even on a winter’s day, the fire is warm, and the sultry perfume of Robertshaw’s cheroots has an effect akin to opium. I had been leafing through a monograph recording the lamentable dissolution of the Phrenological Society of Cambridge, before succumbing to a thankfully dreamless slumber.

  Trentham’s heavy jowls wobbled with amused self-satisfaction. He takes pleasure in startling people with unexpected remarks, in the childish belief that this marks him out as interesting and unpredictable. Meet a murderer’s daughter? For her to have accompanied him here was impossible. Our club does not permit the presence within its precincts of any member of the opposite sex. A tremor of excitement rippled through my body, but it would never do to seem eager. Men like Trentham should not be encouraged.

  I yawned. ‘As you know, my studies into the psychological attributes of—’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Trentham fiddled with his watch chain. Loquacious as he is, when others speak, his hasty manner suggests that he is itching to depart for the coast in a Tilbury, the moment the conversation can be concluded. ‘Thought I’d look in, on the off chance you were here, and not closeted away at home in that damned laboratory of yours.’

  I could not help but sigh. Trentham is not, for all his pretensions as a Linnean, a serious student of matters scientific. He is a dabbler, the summit of whose ambition is to be thought of as a scholar, rather than to do anything so challenging as to indulge in scholarship. His prized collection of botanical specimens amounts to little more, in my opinion, than a variegated collection of weeds.

  ‘The offspring of a hanged man, seeking charity to avoid destitution …?’

  Trentham shook his bald pate with his habitual testy vigour. ‘No, no, Halkett, nothing of the kind. This young lady may be indigent, but her financial circumstances might soon change. You need have no fear of my introducing you to an importuner.’

  ‘Then …’

  ‘Nor was her father hanged.’

  I caught my breath. ‘Yet you say he is a murderer?’

  ‘I make no judgement, please do not misinterpret my remark. I merely repeat a commonly held view. Christabel believes the jury was right to acquit him. Yet to a man, the lawyers I know say he was as guilty as sin. And now the fellow has disappeared.’

  I levered myself out of the chair as the Rimbaud long case clock chimed the quarter hour. A few minutes earlier, I had intended to summon a waiter and order tea. What Trentham was saying, however, cau
sed thoughts of refreshment to flee from my mind.

  ‘Disappeared, you say?’

  Trentham allowed himself a crooked smile. ‘Ah, I see I have caught your interest, you old rascal! I am sure you will be able to put a name to Christabel’s father.’

  I inhaled the smell of calfskin from the bindings of the books on the shelf beside the curtained window. ‘Not … not Leicester?’

  ‘You are acquainted with him, I gather?’ Trentham coughed, in a vain attempt to conceal his enjoyment of my discomfiture. ‘Calderbank tells me that he happened to observe the pair of you taking tea in a secluded corner at Mivan’s Hotel, no more than six weeks ago.’

  That wretched old gossip, Calderbank! I suspected at the time that he had noticed us. It would have caused him such mischievous delight, to see a fellow club member deep in conversation with a man who, despite acquittal in court by twelve good men and true, was regarded in polite society as a man whose reputation was tarnished beyond repair.

  ‘I do not entertain the prejudices of the common herd,’ I said coldly. ‘Leicester’s behaviour makes him an eminently suitable subject for dispassionate assessment.’

  Trentham made an elaborate performance of taking a pinch of snuff. ‘Well, I should say that one man’s dispassionate assessment is another’s inspired guesswork. But never mind that. Simeon, my cousin’s boy, has taken a shine to Christabel Leicester, but his parents insist that he must not see her again. They fear there is bad blood in the family; it is entirely understandable.’

  ‘Christabel’s desire, then,’ I said slowly, as the meaning of our conversation became clear, ‘is to track down any evidence that might offer more comfort than a verdict of not guilty?’

  ‘Precisely, Halkett! But nothing has been seen of Leicester for several weeks. He and the girl were estranged, and she cannot tell whither he may have fled. She suspects that the obloquy he suffered prompted him to leave for the Continent, or possibly the colonies. For all that anybody knows, he may already be living under an assumed identity, seeking to rebuild his life far from England.’

  I nodded. ‘With the consequence that it is difficult for anyone to clear his name.’

  ‘In such circumstances, my thoughts turned to you. Knowing how it pleases you to indulge your hobby of playing the detective.’

  ‘I am a scholar,’ I said coldly, ‘not a policeman, far less a player of games.’

  ‘Of course, I say nothing about the reliability of your methods. But the boy is timid, and the girl headstrong. Pretty young filly, too, little as that may count with an ascetic such as yourself. Nevertheless, there is enough romance in my veins for me to clutch at straws. The girl’s mother succumbed to a crippling lung disease a few months ago, so she is alone in the world. Simeon is a decent lad, and I should be glad to play a part in easing the course of young love.’

  Clearing my throat, I said, ‘I must confess that I am intrigued by what you say.’

  ‘Then you will see the girl?’

  Contriving to suppress my excitement, I inclined my head. ‘It is always a pleasure to assist a fellow member of the Curiosity Club.’

  ‘Mr Trentham has told me a great deal about you,’ Christabel Leicester said.

  When she smiled, it was as if the lobby of Mivan’s Hotel was thrown into dazzling illumination. I had chosen precisely the same spot where – it seemed like yesterday – the girl’s father and I had conversed. Facially, she resembled him. The snub nose, the wide mouth, the scattering of freckles across both cheeks, all those features spoke of his parentage. Yet her hair was long and thick, lustrous and golden, flowing down below her shoulders in such abundance that it was impossible even to hazard a guess at the shape of her head. In contrast, Leicester’s hair was dark and thinning and clung to his skull. He was small and wiry, whereas Christabel’s figure was strikingly mature. Her mother, I surmised, must have possessed equally arresting looks. My interest, however, lay not in the poor creature that Leicester had seduced so long ago.

  ‘My advice would be to discount every word. Trentham is an incurable romantic, whereas I consider myself a man of science.’

  Her eyes sparkled. ‘He told me to read those extraordinary stories of Mr Poe, concerning the Chevalier Dupin.’

  I could not help but wince at the absurdity of the comparison. ‘Put such nonsense out of your mind. Dupin’s supposed analytic genius is a world away from the disciplines of academe. If I am to help you …’

  ‘Yes?’ She leaned towards me, unwittingly making a conspicuous display of her ample bosom. Lesser men would have found her eagerness as intoxicating as the ripe and youthful flesh. I concentrated my gaze instead on those cascading golden locks. ‘Mr Trentham thought it possible that you might be able to establish that my father did not kill that wretched man.’

  I sighed. Trentham scorned my science, and yet, unable to resist the temptation to make a favourable impression upon a comely young woman, he had encouraged her to believe what he did not.

  ‘Are you not content to accept the verdict of the court? Leicester was found not guilty of murdering Hubert Dalrymple.’

  ‘Ha!’ Her cheeks suffused with a pink glow. ‘Very few people in this city doubt that he was the luckiest man in London, Mr Halkett, and that is why I am beseeching you for help. Simeon’s family are set against our union. His father is a diplomat with an eye upon an appointment as ambassador. A scandal would ruin his prospects of promotion, and he has threatened to disinherit Simeon unless he desists from seeing me.’

  ‘But Simeon’s love for you …’ I began, a little hesitantly, for I know little of love, except that it makes fools of men and women alike.

  Her anguish was unmistakeable. ‘Dear Simeon is the light of my life, but he cannot contemplate the prospect of estrangement from his family. For my father to have to be exonerated on a technicality is not enough. Unless and until his innocence can be proven, I shall never see Simeon again.’

  ‘Your father did not treat you well,’ I said.

  She bowed her lovely head. ‘No. Even my small allowance has ceased since my mother died. I am about to start work in a laundry-house in an attempt to make ends meet.’

  Leicester had abandoned his wife and child when Christabel was young to pursue the avocations of a libidinous cad, preying on rich widows and indulging his coarser tastes with women of ill repute. His final conquest had, however, proved to be his undoing.

  ‘Many would say that your father is best forgotten,’ I ventured. ‘The same, I fear, is true of your young man Simeon.’

  She looked up at me. Tears had formed in her blue eyes. Had I possessed a heart, it would have melted.

  ‘I have no one else to turn to,’ she said. ‘You are my only hope.’

  I closed my eyes, and leaned back in the armchair with a low sigh. The meeting had proceeded as if preordained. Her faith in me was as much as I could have dreamed of.

  The death of Hubert Dalrymple did not, by common consent, rob the world of a soul worthy of redemption. Dalrymple had inherited a substantial fortune, and spent some fifty-five years squandering the better part of it on gambling and the sensual pleasures. His first wife had died in childbirth, and his second of a seizure. Some three years prior to his own demise he had married for a third time, after a young woman caught his eye at a racecourse. Emily had been affianced to a stable lad, but Dalrymple’s practised charm soon turned her head, and his lavish way with money no doubt added to his allure. If his intention was to sire an heir, he was disappointed, and in due course he resumed his habit of dalliance with harlots. Yet Emily was too young and spirited to rest content with the lot of the dutiful wife.

  William Leicester was twelve years Dalrymple’s junior, and no less dissolute. The two men had long been thick as thieves, and Leicester often called upon the Dalrymples at their house in Bryanston Street, near to the Marble Arch. In the fullness of time, a scandalous intimacy developed between Emily Dalrymple and her husband’s friend. Dalrymple became aware of the liaison, and whether he
was complaisant in the matter, or even offered Leicester encouragement, became a question of fierce dispute during the subsequent trial.

  One week before his death, Dalrymple threw Emily out of his house. She scurried not to Leicester’s arms, but to the home in Guildford of her married sister Mary. There she remained until news came that Dalrymple had died at the house of an elderly neighbour to whom he had complained of severe abdominal pains, accompanied by vomiting and sundry other symptoms of serious illness. The doctor who attended him ensured that his stomach and its contents were removed and examined. The investigation revealed the traces of eighty-five grains of arsenic.

  The police were called in and quickly established that Dalrymple had told the neighbour of a visit by Leicester the evening before his death. In the final hours before his unpleasant life came to a fittingly dreadful end, and with his very last words before he lost consciousness, he accused Leicester of poisoning him. When challenged, Leicester did not deny having called at Bryanston Street, but maintained that he had come to apologise to Dalrymple for his conduct with regard to Emily. On his account, the men had eaten a hearty meal together and drunk heavily, parting with their friendship renewed, as firm as ever.

  Enquiries revealed that, under the terms of the recent Arsenic Act, an apothecary in Soho had recorded half a dozen occasions when he had sold white arsenic to Leicester. Again, the fellow made a ready admission of the facts. His counsel was to argue that his frankness was a sign of innocence, although, in truth, the evidence was unequivocal, and only a complete fool would have contested it. Whatever his failings, Leicester was not a complete fool.

  According to the neighbour, Dalrymple had complained a week earlier of a serious digestive ailment, and enquiries rapidly established that the incidents had roughly coincided with a visit made by Leicester to the Bryanston Street house, whose arrival had been apprehended by the observant neighbour. Leicester maintained that he had come to visit Emily, only to find that she had left for Guildford. A terse conver-sation had taken place between Dalrymple and himself, but he refuted the suggestion that they had had anything to eat or drink together. He claimed that, after lengthy reflection, he had concluded his entanglement with Emily, and resolved to restore cordial relations with Dalrymple. Hence the supposed evening of reconciliation immediately prior to the older man’s demise.