The Mangle Street Murders Part 36

Some people dream of having a cottage with roses. Every Sergeant Major I met was going to run a little public house by the sea when they took their pensions. Most officers were oldest sons and would retire to their family estates. Some would go on to run rubber or sugar plantations.

We were going to stay. We would have opened a school for the local children with a small dispensary for simple medical treatments. People laughed when we told them that. I remember Colonel Rees-James asking what the point was of teaching ignorant savages, and you said that they were not savages and, by the time we had finished, they would not be ignorant.

You controlled yourself so well but I could see how you felt. You were never angry but I was proud to see you angry about that.

60.

Soot My guardian sat and watched me pour our teas.

*Why were you so uninterested in Sir Randolph's death?' I asked. *Surely it might have given us more clues about the murderer.'

*Four reasons.' Sidney Grice slid his eye outwards with one finger. *First, I have no financial inducement to investigate his death. Second, we do not even know he was murdered by the same man. Third, I would have to list myself as a suspect since I had everything to gain by his death. Indeed, I expressed the hope that his throat would be cut and-'

*Yes, but you did not mean it.'

*I never say anything that I do not mean.' He swivelled his signet ring with his thumb. *And, fourth, the whole matter is distracting me from my true purpose a to prove yet again that William Ashby was a murderer.'

*But you-' I began.

Sidney Grice raised a hand to silence me. *I must have quiet while I think.'

He got up and paced across his study from the desk to the bay window, paused briefly to look out, spun round and paced back again. For the best part of an hour he marched to and fro and, having little else to do on that wet Monday evening, I sat in an armchair by the fire, warming my feet, flicking through an account in The Times of a series of garrottings on Waterloo Bridge.

*I am still missing something,' he said at last.

*Your tea?' I said, for it would be undrinkable by now, but he scowled at me and said, *There is something not right about this letter.'

*Why is it so important?' I asked. *And what is wrong with it? Inspector Pound vouched that William Ashby wrote it in his presence.'

*I knew there was something wrong before I even looked at it.' He reached the desk and picked the letter up. *But what?' He took the letter out of its envelope.

*Remember I said it held the key to the mystery? Well, I am still convinced of that.' He unfolded the letter and read it out, though we could both have recited it by now.

DEAR MR GRISE.

PLEASE HELP ME I AM AN INNASENT MAN.

YOURS TRUELY.

WILLIAM ASHBY.

*Ashby was, for his cla.s.s, an educated man,' my guardian said. *His old teacher remembered what an exemplary student he was, and yet he produces an illiterate meaningless scrawl in an attempt to save his life. How would this letter help him?' He reached the window and waved the paper in the air. *Cheap paper provided by the police. No heading or watermark. No...' He stopped and held the letter closer. He clipped on his pince-nez. *Soot,' he cried out.

*You have found soot on the letter?'

*No. We need some.' He hurried to the fire and, oblivious to the heat, reached inside the chimney, his hand coming out black with a fistful of soot and his cuff quite ruined. *Hold the letter flat on the rug, March.'

I pressed it down by the corners, and my guardian kneeled beside me and sprinkled the soot all over it and the sleeve of my dress.

*Molly will not be happy with the state of this rug,' I said.

*Molly can go and practise her curtsies on the bottom of the Thames. Let go of the letter.' Sidney Grice picked it up carefully, tipped the soot from it on to the hearth, and blew, a black cloud billowing into his face and over his starched shirt. He sprang up, almost knocking the table over, and ran back to the window. *Turn up the gas light,' he said and I twisted the valve, seeing the flame swell and the mantle glow orange then red then white on the wall. He hurried to it and held the letter up again. *See.' His voice rose with excitement. *See the imprint of the other letter.'

I stood close by him and looked up. The effect was smudged and unclear but the words were unmistakeable.

FORTY TIMES IN ALL. I COUNTED EVERY CUT. SHE NEVER DID ME ANY WRONG EXCEPT FOR ONE THING. I SAW HER WALKING DOWN THE STREET. SHE.

I did not need to read any more to recognize the letter.

*It was the envelope that was wrong,' my guardian said. *I should have spotted it straight away. It was slightly too big for the letter. It had been stretched by another.'

*Which was taken out before it was given to you,' I said.

*Exactly,' he said. *Look, March, at the well-formed letters and the punctuation. It is an educated hand. It is the hand of a murderer, the man who called himself Caligula but whose real name was William Ashby.'

61.

The Windows of the Soul I thought about my guardian's words and said, *I thought you told me William Ashby was innocent.'

*Then you thought wrongly. I said he did not kill his wife.'

*But-'

*The truth was there all the time.' Sidney Grice sat back in his armchair. *If only you had looked into his eyes.'

*But I-'

*Forget all that windows-of-the-soul silliness.' He flapped his hand. *The eye is a sensory organ. You might as well say somebody has innocent ears or a guilty nose as to say it of their eyes. What about my gla.s.s eye? Is it any more or less innocent than the other?'

*No, but it is greener.'

*No, it is not.' He looked at himself in the mantle mirror.

*In the daylight it is.'

*It is not. Anyway, for you and the inspector to tell me that William Ashby had innocent eyes is childish drivel.'

*I can see the logic in that,' I said, *but-'

*We will deal with all these buts another time,' my guardian broke in, *when we are bored and have nothing useful to say to each other. We can, however, deduce something from watching a man's eyes just as we can from observing his lips a whether he smiles or frowns, for example a what he does with his hands, feet, general bodily demeanour, et cetera.'

*I cannot see the relevance of your point.'

*I watched Ashby's eyes' a my guardian jabbed his finger at nothing a *when I interviewed him and at every point of his trial. I saw who he looked at and how he looked at them. He regarded you cordially, for example, and me with a degree of loathing.'

*Do you blame him?'

*I would have been puzzled if he had not.' My guardian produced his pencil with the flourish of a magician. *I also observed Mrs Dillinger's eyes when we met and during the trial. I noticed that she and Ashby spent a great deal of time looking at each other, but I mistook their meaning.'

*Surely he looked to her for support and she did her best to give it.'

*There was that, of course,' my guardian said, *but there was more and, once I had realized that, almost everything else fell into place. It is obvious now and I am annoyed with myself that I did not see it at once, but William Ashby and Grace Dillinger were in love.'

Tiny wisps of smoke fluttered from the embers.

*She was his mother-in-law.'

*As Mr Froume ascertained, she was not, but, even if she were, she was closer to Ashby's age than his wife was. Despite all the jokes about mothers-in-law it is not uncommon for them to form a platonic affection for their sons-in-law. Sometimes this is based on a mutual affection for the wife. In this case it was based on a shared resentment of her. We have already heard how Mr Dillinger doted on Sarah. In my experience, if a daughter is the apple of her father's eye it is because his wife is not.'

I took a while to consider this opinion. *But how can you prove it?'

Sidney Grice tapped his teeth with his pencil and said, *I cannot yet but, once we take the idea as a premise, almost everything else falls neatly into place.'

Molly came in and set some fresh tea on the tray before us, and her employer touched the pot.

*You have finally delivered a beverage of the requisite temperature,' he said.

*Sorry, sir.'

Sidney Grice shook his head in exaggerated despair as she left.

*Pour it, March. I am getting thirsty and I have quite a problem to unravel yet.'

62.

The Nail *Imagine the situation.' My guardian shuddered as I poured a little milk into my cup. *William Ashby meets Sarah. She is a pretty girl, as we have seen, and he is, no doubt, besotted. Sarah has a father who adores her and grants her every wish, but for whom she has no affection. She sees William, who is fifteen years older than her, as the man to take her father's place. The relationship is a disaster. William needs a frugal, hard-working partner and gets an idle spendthrift. They quarrel. Sarah's mother sides with William. She too has had enough of her daughter's behaviour.'

Sidney Grice paused to sip his tea. *William becomes very fond of Grace. She is, if anything, more beautiful than her daughter. She is only five years older than William and looks young for her age. Her husband is old and unsavoury. William is st.u.r.dy and kind-hearted. They have what I believe modern novels describe as an affair. The trouble is that William is a decent man. He knows it is not right to have congress with someone he regards as his wife's mother. Perhaps Sarah suspects. Either-'

*But if William was so decent, why did he not marry Sarah?' I asked.

*Her father would not allow it,' my guardian said. *He had better things planned for his daughter than a tuppence-halfpenny shopkeeper and, until Sarah reached the age of majority at twenty-one, he could withhold his permission and they could do nothing about it.'

*So she must have loved William once.'

*What is love?' Sidney Grice sniffed. *It is nothing more than a feeling.' He sniffed again. *But to continue a William tries to put an end to his relationship with Grace but she refuses to be cast aside. Why should Sarah have everything her own way?'

*And, as there is no legal relationship between Grace and William, there is nothing in law to stop them from marrying.' I put two sugars in my tea. *Except for William's decency.'

My guardian nodded. *He wants to do the right thing, but suddenly what the right thing is changes dramatically. Grace Dillinger tells William that she is with child and, since she has not lain with her own husband for many years, William must be the father.'

My guardian flicked a speck of soot, smudging it over his shirt. *Her husband has died recently a the removal of the only impediment to William marrying Sarah also left him free to marry Grace, who is about to be delivered of their baby. William must do the right thing by her but he is torn.'

Sidney Grice fished two halfpennies out of his waistcoat pocket. *Perhaps he agrees to do it a more likely he dithers and fudges a but then events take another turn. Alice Hawkins sees or overhears William and Grace together. I expect Grace wanted her to, for Grace is not a careless woman.'

*And Alice is Sarah's best friend.' The mantle clock struck the half-hour as I spoke. *She would tell her everything.'

His left heel drummed the floor arrhythmically. *On the Sunday night Sarah confronts her mother in William's presence. The women have a bitter and violent argument. William, ever the weak one, says he cannot desert Sarah and goes off into the kitchen. He cannot bear it.'

*For all Sarah's faults he still loved her too.' I stirred my tea. *I could see it in his eyes.'

*Absurd as your ocular observations are, yes, he did.' He flipped the coins over each other in his left hand. *The row gets worse. Sarah takes off her meaningless wedding ring and flings it in the fire, or possibly Grace rips it from her finger. In the tussle Sarah kicks her mother, bruising her toe a and rips her dress a hence the yellow thread caught in her fingernail, though I have yet to prove that Mrs Dillinger ever had a yellow dress.'