Moriarty

‘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 only 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.’