‘Thank you, Mr Lavelle,’ I said. ‘And as we know how busy you are, we will not ask you to stay. Clayton can show us out when we are done.’
He wasn’t too pleased about that, but went anyway. Jones said nothing but I could see he was surprised that I had dismissed Lavelle in this manner and it occurred to me that I had behaved, perhaps, a touch impetuously. However, this was my investigation too, and as much as I looked up to Jones, I surely had a right to make my presence felt.
‘My name is Inspector Athelney Jones,’ my companion began. ‘I am making enquiries about a man called Clarence Devereux. Does that name mean anything to you?’
None of them spoke.
‘Yesterday, shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, I saw a boy enter this house. I had followed him here from Regent Street. He was wearing a bright blue coat and a hat. I see that the path leads directly to this room. Were any of you here when he came in?’
‘I was here all afternoon,’ the cook mumbled. ‘There was only me and Thomas and we didn’t see no one.’
Thomas, the kitchen boy, nodded in agreement.
‘What were you doing?’ I asked.
She looked at me insolently. ‘Cooking!’
‘Luncheon or dinner?’
‘Both!’
‘And what are you cooking now?’
‘Mr and Mrs Lavelle are going out today. This is for tonight. And those vegetables …’ she nodded at Thomas, ‘… is for tomorrow. And then we’ll start work on the day after!’
‘No one came to the house,’ Clayton cut in. ‘If they had rung the bell, I would have answered it. And we don’t get many callers here. Mr Lavelle don’t encourage ’em.’
‘The boy didn’t come in the front way,’ I said. ‘He entered through the garden door.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Clayton said. ‘It’s locked both sides.’
‘I would like to see it.’
‘To what purpose?’
‘I don’t think it’s your business to ask questions, Clayton. It is simply to do as I say.’
‘Very well, sir.’
He put down the fork that he had been polishing and lumbered over to the dresser, an oversized piece of furniture that dominated an entire wall. I had noticed a panel with a dozen keys hanging beside it and he carefully selected one, then used it to open the kitchen door, turning it in yet another of the complicated locks that lent themselves to the security of the house. The three of us – Jones, Clayton and myself – stepped into the garden. A curving path led to the wooden gate at the bottom with lawns and flowerbeds on either side. I suspected these had been planted by the former residents, for they had once been neat and symmetrical but were already in a state of some neglect. I led the way, with Clayton next to me and Jones limping behind. In this way we came to the door that we had observed from outside and saw that, as well as the Chubb lock, there was a metal hasp with a second lock on the inside, securing the door to the frame. It would have been very difficult to scale the wall, which was topped with sharp spikes and which would, furthermore, be in full sight of the house. Nor could anybody have jumped down. They would certainly have left footmarks in the lawn.
‘Do you have the key to this lock?’ Jones asked, indicating the metal hasp.
‘I have it in the house,’ Clayton replied. ‘But this gate is never used, Mr Jones, despite what you and this other gentleman may say. We’re very careful in this house. Nobody comes in except through the front door and the keys are themselves kept in a safe place.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to open it?’
‘Two locks – one inside, one out. Both of them, I would have said, added recently. What is it your employer fears?’ I asked.
‘Mr Lavelle does not discuss his affairs with me.’ Clayton sneered at me. ‘Have you seen enough?’ It struck me that his manner was deliberately impertinent. Although he had encountered Athelney Jones in his former life, he had no fear of me.
‘I will not tell you what I have or have not seen,’ I returned. But he was right. There was no reason to stay any longer.
We went back to the kitchen. Once again, I was the first to enter and I saw that the cook and the kitchen boy had returned to their work as if they had forgotten we had called. Thomas was in the scullery and the old woman had joined him, selecting onions from a shelf one at a time as if she suspected that they might be counterfeit. Finally Jones arrived and the footman once more locked the door behind him and returned the key to its place. It was clear that there was nothing more to be said. We could perhaps have demanded to be allowed to search the house for the missing telegraph boy but what would that achieve? A place like this would have a hundred hiding places and possibly secret panels too. Jones nodded at Clayton and we left.
‘I do not think the boy came to the house,’ I said as we stood, once more, on the other side of the front gate.
‘Why do you believe that?’
‘I searched around the garden door. There was no sign of any footprints, man or boy. And he could not have opened the door from the outside as there was a metal hasp within.’
‘I saw it myself, Chase. And I agree that, from the evidence, it would seem impossible for the boy to have entered, unless, of course, the hasp had been unfastened in expectation of his arrival. And yet consider this. I followed him and, unwittingly, he brought me directly to the house of Scotchy Lavelle, a man familiar to you and a known associate of Clarence Devereux. This must have been where he came unless Devereux himself is living somewhere nearby and, as I told you, it is impossible that he went elsewhere. When the evidence leads to only one possible conclusion, the truth of it, no matter how unlikely, cannot be ignored. I believe the boy entered the house and I believe he may still be there.’
‘Then what are we to do?’
‘We must seek the proper authority and return to make a full search.’
‘If the boy knows we are looking for him, he will leave.’
‘Maybe so, but I would like to speak to that woman of Lavelle’s. Henrietta – was that her name? She may be more nervous of the police than he. As for Clayton, he may be too afraid to talk for the moment, but I will make him see sense. Trust me, Chase. There will be something in the house that will direct us along the next step of the way.’
‘To Clarence Devereux!’
‘Precisely. If the two men are in communication with one another, which they must be, we will find the link.’
We did return, as it happened, the very next day – but not to make the search that Jones anticipated. For by the time the sun had risen once again over Highgate Hill, Bladeston House would have become the scene of a peculiarly horrible and utterly baffling crime.
SEVEN
Blood and Shadows
It was the maid who discovered the bodies and who awoke the neighbourhood with her screams the next morning. Contrary to what her employer had told us, Miss Mary Stagg did not live in the house and it was for that simple reason that she did not die there. Mary shared a small cottage with her sister, who was also in service, in Highgate Village, the two of them having inherited it from their parents. She had not been at Bladeston House when we were there – it happened to be her day off and she and her sister had gone shopping. She had presented herself the following morning, just as the sun was rising, to clear the hearths and to help prepare the breakfast and had been puzzled to find both the front gate and the front door open. Such an unusual lapse of security should have warned her that something was seriously amiss but she had continued forward, doubtless whistling a tune, only to encounter a scene of horror she would remember to the end of her days.
Even I had to steel myself as I climbed down from the barouche which had been sent to collect me. Athelney Jones was waiting at the door and one look at his face – pale and disgusted – warned me that this was a scene of horror which he, with all his experience, had never encountered before.
‘What snakepit have we uncovered, Chase?’ he demanded, when he saw me. ‘To think that you and I were here o
nly yesterday. Was it our visit that in some way, unwittingly, led to this bloodbath?’
‘Lavelle …?’ I asked.
‘All of them! Clayton, the ginger-haired boy, the cook, the mistress … they have all been murdered.’
‘How?’
‘You will see. Four of them died in their beds. Maybe they should be grateful. But Lavelle …’ He drew a breath. ‘This is as bad as Swallow Gardens or Pinchin Street – the very worst of the worst.’
Together, we went into the house. There were seven or eight police officers present, creeping slowly and silently in the shadows as if they might somehow wish themselves away. The hall, which had seemed dark when I first entered, had become significantly darker and there was the heavy smell of the butcher’s shop in the air. I became aware of the buzzing of flies and at the same time saw what might have been a thick pool of tar on the floor.
‘Good God!’ I exclaimed and brought my hand to my eyes, half covering them whilst unable to avoid staring at the scene that presented itself to me.
Scotchy Lavelle was sitting in one of the heavy wooden chairs that I had noticed the day before and which had been dragged forward expressly for this purpose. He was dressed in a silk nightshirt which reached to his ankles. His feet were bare. He had been positioned so that he faced a mirror. Whoever had done this had wanted him to see what was going to happen.
He had not been tied into place. He had been nailed there. Jagged squares of metal protruded from the backs of his broken hands which even in death still clasped the arms of the chair as if determined not to let go. The hammer that had been used for this evil deed lay in front of the fireplace and there was a china vase, lying on its side. Nearby, I noticed two bright ribbons which must have been brought down from the bedroom and which were also strewn on the floor.
Scotchy Lavelle’s throat had been cut cleanly and viciously in a manner that could not help but remind me of the surgeon’s knife that Perry had so cheerfully used to threaten me in the Café Royal. I wondered if Jones had already leapt to the same, unavoidable conclusion. This horrific murder could have been committed by a child … though not one acting alone. It would have taken at least two people to drag Lavelle into place. And what of the rest of the household?
‘They were murdered in their sleep,’ Jones muttered, as if looking into my mind. ‘The cook, the kitchen boy, the woman whose name was, perhaps, Henrietta. There is not a mark of any struggle on them. Clayton slept in the basement. He has been stabbed through the heart.’
‘But did none of them wake up?’ I asked. ‘Are you really telling me they heard nothing?’
‘I believe they were drugged.’
I absorbed this information and even as I spoke I knew Jones was ahead of me. ‘The curry!’ I exclaimed. ‘You remember, Jones? I asked the woman what she was cooking and she said that it was for dinner. They must have all eaten it, and whoever came here … it would have been easy enough to add some powerful drug, maybe powdered opium. The curry would have disguised the taste.’
‘But they would have had to reach the kitchen first,’ Jones muttered.
‘We should examine the door.’
We both circled the body, keeping our distance, for the blood and the shadows looked very much like one another and we had to be careful where we placed our feet. It was only when we had reached the relative sanctuary of the kitchen that we breathed again. For a second time I found myself examining the spotless cooking range, the tiled floor, the open door of the scullery with the shelves neatly stacked. In the midst of all this, the cooking pot that had held the curry sat dark and empty, like a guilty secret. The one surviving maid was in this room, hunched up in a chair and weeping into her apron, watched over by a uniformed police constable.
‘This is bad,’ I said. ‘This is very bad.’
‘But who would do such a thing and why? That must be our first line of investigation.’ I could see that Jones, knocked off his feet by the ruthlessness of the murders, was struggling to regain the composure that had been so much part of his nature when we were together in Meiringen. ‘We know that Scott Lavelle – or Scotchy Lavelle – was part of a gang headed by Clarence Devereux.’
‘Of that there can be no doubt,’ I said.
‘He arranges to meet with Professor James Moriarty and to that end he sends a boy, Perry, to the Café Royal. A man pretending to be Moriarty is there but the impersonation fails. The boy knows you are not who you say you are …’
‘… because of the ravens in the tower.’
‘So that is the end of the matter. The boy makes the long journey to Highgate and reports back to the people who sent him. There will be no meeting. Perhaps Moriarty is dead after all. That is what these people are led to believe.’
‘And then we appear.’
‘Yes, detectives from two separate nations. We know about the boy. We ask questions – but the truth of it is, Chase, we make little progress. I imagine Lavelle was smiling when we left.’
‘He’s not doing so now,’ I said, although I couldn’t help but think of the great red gash in his throat. It had the shape of a demonic smile.
‘Why has he been killed? Why now? But here is our first clue, our first indication of what may have taken place. The door is unlocked.’
Athelney Jones was right. The door that led into the garden, that we had seen Clayton fasten and unfasten with a key from beside the dresser, was open. He turned the handle and, grateful for the fresh air, I followed him out onto the ill-trimmed lawn that we had crossed only the day before.
Together we walked down to the wall and saw at once that the far door was also open. The Chubb had been unlocked on the outside. A circular hole had been drilled through the wood, positioned exactly to reveal the inner lock. This had then been cut through and the metal hasp removed. Jones inspected the handiwork.
‘The Chubb appears undamaged,’ he said. ‘If it was picked, then our intruders have shown skills beyond those of any common or garden burglar – not that such a creature was involved, of that we can be sure. It is possible that they were able to lay their hands on a duplicate key. We will see. The other lock, the one holding the hasp, is of particular interest. You will see that they have cut a hole in the door, perhaps using a centre bit with two or three blades. It would have made very little noise. But see where they have placed it!’
‘The hole is level with the lock,’ I said.
‘Exactly. It has been measured to the inch. A second drill has then been used to cut through the casing, exposing the wards. It is a professional job – but it would not have been possible if the intruders had not stood where we are now and made careful note of the exact position of the lock.’
‘They could have been helped by someone inside the house.’
‘Everyone inside the house is dead, apart from the maid. I am more inclined to think they acted on their own.’
‘You speak of intruders, Inspector Jones. You are certain there was more than one?’
‘Undoubtedly. There are tracks.’ He gestured with his walking stick and, looking down, I was able to make out two sets of footprints, side by side, heading away from the wall and approaching the house. ‘A man and a boy,’ he continued. ‘You can see that the boy is carefree. He almost trips along. The man has left a deeper impression. He is tall, at least six feet in height, and he was wearing unusual boots. You see the square toe? He held back while the boy raced ahead.’
‘The boy had been here before.’
‘It is true that his stride could suggest a familiarity with his surroundings. Note also that he follows the most direct route to the kitchen. There was a moon, I believe, last night, but he had no fear of being seen.’
‘He knew that the household was asleep.’
‘Drugged and sound asleep. There still remains the question of how he entered the house, but my guess is that he climbed a drainpipe and entered by the second floor.’ Athelney Jones unfolded the binoculars on his walking stick and used them to examine the upper
part of the building. There was indeed a slender drainpipe beside the kitchen door which would never have supported the weight of an adult – perhaps it was for this reason that Lavelle had never considered it as a breach in his defences. But for a child, it would have been a different matter entirely, and once he had reached the first floor …
‘The windows are snibbed,’ Jones continued. ‘It would be easy enough to slide a knife inside the frame. He would then have come down the stairs and opened the door to allow his accomplice in.’
‘The boy of whom we speak … it must be the same,’ I said.
‘Perry? Undoubtedly.’ Athelney Jones lowered the walking stick. ‘I would not normally associate a child with crimes as gruesome as these, but I saw him with you. I saw the weapon he carried. He came here. I followed him myself. He entered through the garden door, came into the kitchen and saw the curry being prepared. It must have been then that he made his preparations, intending to return at night with his colleague. But there still remains the one question. Why did Lavelle lie to us? Why did they all pretend the boy had not been here? They had sent him to meet us. There could be no other reason for him to have appeared in the Café Royal. But when he returned, alone, what then occurred?’
‘And why, if he was working for Lavelle, did he turn on his master and assist in his murder?’
‘I hoped you might shed some light on that. Your work in America …’
‘I can only repeat what I have already told you, Inspector. The American criminal has no discrimination and no sense of loyalty. Until Clarence Devereux came onto the scene, he worked in isolation, with no organisation or structure. Even afterwards, he remained vicious, treacherous and unpredictable. Crime in New York was often as bloody as this and as incomprehensible. Brothers could fall out over the toss of a coin and one of them – both of them – might end up dead. Sisters too. Do you see now? I was trying to warn you. The events here at Bladeston House are only the start, the first warning signs of the poison that has entered the bloodstream of your country. Maybe Devereux was responsible. Maybe our visit here – for you can be sure that he will have received the intelligence – was enough to persuade him that Lavelle had to be silenced. I don’t know. It all makes me sick. But I fear a great deal more blood may be shed before we arrive at the truth.’