The Mangle Street Murders Part 6

*Show some respect.' Parker curled in disgust as Sidney Grice moved slightly to one side.

*No sign of any traumatic penetration,' Sidney Grice observed.

*For the love of G.o.d,' Parker said, covering his mouth with a filthy hand and taking a step sideways.

*Do you know what I think?' Sidney Grice asked, straightening his back.

*No,' I said.

*I think it is time to go.'

*I couldn't disagree less,' Parker said, wiping his dirty palms on his dirtier coat.

*To Mangle Street?' I asked.

*Home.' My guardian produced a bar of soap and a little towel from his bag. *It will be too late by the time we get to Whitechapel and we are more likely to miss or even destroy the evidence in the dark. No, Miss Middleton, I was thinking of a nice cup of tea, and I am sure you could do with a bite to eat.' He went to a tap on the wall.

*Wouldn't mind a drink myself,' Parker said.

*Then I shall not detain you any longer,' Sidney Grice said as he dried his hands and packed his things away.

*No I meant-'

*I am fully aware of what you meant.' Sidney Grice put some coins into Parker's hand.

*Why thank you, Mr Grice.'

*And if that impostor Cochran shows his face do not let him anywhere near her.' Sidney Grice turned to me. *Only last month he poached my decapitated architect and got two pages in the Evening Standard for a case that even you could have solved.'

*It must have been idiotically simple then,' I said.

My guardian lifted the sheet over Sarah Ashby, pausing when he reached her head.

*The face of an angel,' he said, letting the sheet fall.

*Did we pa.s.s the inspection?' Parker asked as he showed us to the door.

Outside, the light was already failing and I was glad that it was cold. My shaking could be pa.s.sed off as a shiver.

9.

The Same Moon We made a quiet couple at either end of the dining-room table.

*Do you usually dine alone?' I asked.

*No,' he said. *I always dine with a book. This is a particular favourite of mine a A Brief Study of African Parasitic Worms a beautifully ill.u.s.trated with coloured drawings.'

*Does it not put you off your dinner?'

*Why should it? I am not planning to eat one.'

I sipped my soup, but I have never liked tomato. It looks like blood and smells like sweat to me.

*If I had known more about the subject three years ago,' Sidney Grice continued, *I might have been able to prove that Lord Jennings went much further up the Ivory Coast than was believed at the time, and thus saved his companions from the charge of deserting him and being drummed out of their regiment.'

I tried some more soup. My guardian had finished his and turned a page, bringing out an ivory-encased pencil and placing it parallel to his knife.

*How did you know my father?' I asked, and Sidney Grice's eye fell out. He caught it deftly and put it into his waistcoat pocket.

*I shall not divulge any information about your father.' He produced a black patch out of his jacket, like a conjurer with bunting, and tied it over the socket. The effect was mildly comical but his expression was not. *Except that I owe him a great debt which I am partially repaying by tolerating your presence in my house.'

*You are too kind.'

*I am not at all kind but I do honour my obligations.'

He mopped his bowl with a piece of bread.

*What was my mother like?'

*A famous beauty.' My guardian sprayed a few crumbs over the white starched tablecloth. *And the thinly disguised heroine of a trashy novel. Her eyes, it was said, were like sapphires in the sun, and her hair was burnished gold.'

*Not mousey like mine?'

He wiped his lips with his napkin and replaced it on his lap. *Not in the least. Nor was she scrawny.'

I put down my spoon.

*But what was she like as a person? My father never spoke of her.'

*That is not for me to say.'

*But surely-'

*Please do not ask me about them again. For reasons I cannot divulge it is not appropriate.'

*But-'

He raised his hand and turned back to his book, grunting to himself as he pencilled a note in the margin.

*Who is Mr Cochran?' I asked.

*Never mind who he is.' He pointed the blunt end of his pencil at me. *I will tell you what he is. He is a posturing, vainglorious, publicity-seeking, self-opinionated, jumped-up, in.o.bservant, illogical, ineffectual, grasping braggart.'

Molly came, a little breathless, to clear the plates.

*This soup was tepid,' Sidney Grice told her, not even glancing up from his book.

*Thank you, sir.'

*That is not an endors.e.m.e.nt,' he said. *Nothing should be tepid. Tea should be hot and drinking water cold. Do you even know what tepid is?'

*Indeed I do, sir,' Molly said. *Cook was telling me it is how she feels about you. So it must be a good feeling.'

My guardian tsked as Molly brought three covered dishes from the dumb waiter and put them on the sideboard to serve us boiled potatoes, cabbage and carrots. I waited to see if my guardian would comment, but he was tucking into his food before she had even closed the door.

*Are you not hungry, March?'

*Very,' I said, *but I was waiting for the meat.'

*Have you not seen enough meat today,' he asked, *without wanting to put some more into your mouth?'

I picked up my knife but put it down again.

*What is it now?' he asked.

*How can you refer to the mortal remains of a young woman as meat?' I asked.

*Skin, muscle and bone.' He tracked the salt up and down his plate. *Meat by any definition. Throw a leg of mutton with a leg of man into the lion's pit and see if it differentiates between them.'

He speared a piece of carrot on his fork and popped it in his mouth.

*How can you be so callous?'

*Weep for the living,' he dabbed his mouth, *and, as for your charge of being callous, it is not I who feeds upon the dead.'

*But if you allow yourself to think like that you would never eat any meat at all.'

*I do not.'

*Not even ham?'

*Especially not ham. I have known pigs that are as wise as judges and a great deal more intelligent than juries, and certainly more fragrant.'

We had water with our meal, a small etched carafe each with a crystal gla.s.s tumbler.

*Tepid,' Sidney Grice said. *You should bring a book to the table, March. It would relieve me of the strain of making pleasant chatter. What are you reading at present?'

*I have not a book with me yet,' I said.

*Then I shall lend you Swinburne,' he said.

*Thank you,' I said. *I love his ode to Sappho.'

*Not that degenerate half-wit's perverted gibberish.' My guardian wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin. *Samuel Swinburne's Treatment of London's Sewage. His chapters on the problems of disposing of human waste are most informative and entertaining.'

*Is there to be a sweet pudding?' I asked, still hungry.

*Sugar blackens the teeth, which is why I only partake of it once a week,' he told me and I laughed. *How could anything so white and pure do that?' Then all the images rushed back. *Oh, how can I be amused on such a day as this?'

*The human mind is not capable of comprehending or containing this world's agony,' Sidney Grice said, *or we should all go mad.'

I took a drink of water. *Whoever savaged that poor girl must surely be insane.'

*I have seen one hundred and eighty-six bodies in my professional capacity.' My guardian mashed his potatoes with his fork. *But I have not seen any murder so coldly calculated as that we witnessed today.'

*I do not understand.'

*And I am not sure that I do either,' Sidney Grice said, *yet.'

And so to my room.

I looked out of the window and saw the same full moon that I had watched last night hanging over Hunger Hill, but which shone tonight on the roofs of a vast metropolis which I and four million people called their home. It was difficult to believe that I had begun the same day in my own home two hundred miles away.

I performed my toilet, brushing my hair one hundred times, changed into my cotton nightdress and bedsocks, for the night air was chill, and wrote my journal at the table.

I put the journal back in my writing box and pressed the b.u.t.ton under the inkwell to open the secret compartment.

They were still there, your twelve letters carefully bound in a black ribbon with a band of gold. I read the first one.

Always remember... you wrote, but I could not read on. I retied the ribbon and touched the gold.

And afterwards I read my Bible. Oh, death, where is thy sting?

But what of Sarah Ashby? Was the victim of such savagery now at peace? I kneeled by my bed and prayed for her and for those I had loved and lost, and for the mother I hoped to know one day, and for the first time I prayed for the soul of Sidney Grice, for surely even he had one.

10.