The Vesuvius Club Read online

  That afternoon, I found myself standing on the jetty of a grimy wharf in the East End. The day remained unbearably humid and the tarry black warehouses loomed over me like overcoated giants. As I watched, another crate was hauled up from a small rowing boat.

  It was a scene far from the dreamy river-scapes of old man Monet. A noxious haze drifted over the drear Thames, insinuating its way like smoke into the nearest doorway where three stout fellows and the even-stouter Delilah now dragged the crate. I followed at a distance and doffed my straw hat. Respect for the dead, do you see, because inside that narrow splintering box were the mortal remains of the unfortunate Jocelyn Poop, would-be lion of the foreign office now little more than ten stones of rapidly deteriorating flesh.

  The interior of the warehouse was dim. I stepped back into the queasy green shadows of the gas-lamps as Delilah planted her feet firmly on the floor and, jemmy in hand, began to wrench the planks from the improvised coffin.

  ‘’Ave ’im hart hin just ha jiffy, sir,’ she grunted, tossing broken planking over her shoulder. Her three thickset fellow Domestics, meanwhile, prepared the butcher’s slab on to which Poop was to be conveyed.

  Melted ice was already pooling about Delilah’s boots and I heard it cracking and splintering as though in a gin-glass as the brutish female began to lift Poop’s body out by the shoulders.

  ‘Cor! What ha stink!’ cackled Delilah. ‘They don’t know ’ow to pack hem, those bleedin’ heye-ties, do they sir?’

  I clamped my glove to my mouth and shook my head. The stench was vile and almost overpowering. Hastily, I gestured to the Domestics to get on with it and, within a moment or two, the dead man lay before me, his skin waxy, pockets of ice plastering the soaked fabric of his linen suit. There seemed nothing much to be gleaned from the reasonably intact torso. Poop’s head, however, was quite a different matter. It was little more than a football-shaped outrage, black with congealed blood and matted with weed-like hair.

  Stepping gingerly forward I peered at the gory mess and risked taking away the glove from my mouth.

  ‘Contents of the clothing, Delilah,’ I barked.

  ‘Right haway, sir.’ She returned to the wharf to collect the rest of the delivery.

  I nodded towards the other Domestics. ‘Get me a jug of water and a scrubbing brush.’

  One of them nodded in acquiescence. By the time Delilah returned with a small leather satchel, I had cleaned up Poop’s shattered noggin somewhat, exposing a hook nose and a rather unprepossessing moustache. Above the bridge of the nose, the whole of the forehead had been stoved in.

  ‘It was more than a cosh that did this,’ I mused to myself. Taking up the jug, I poured water into the wound. Particles of skin and brain matter floated away over Poop’s cheeks in ghastly rivulets like congealed crusts of oil-paint.

  I bent closer, holding my breath against the stench of corruption. Anticipating my needs, Delilah stepped forward with a lantern that I took from her fat hand. There was something very odd about the wound in Poop’s head.

  I probed with my fingers for some little time then, sucking my teeth thoughtfully, stepped away from the corpse and folded my arms.

  ‘Delilah, I should be most awfully grateful if you could fetch me some plaster of Paris.’

  ‘Plaster of Paris, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Though where you’ll lay your hands on some all the way out here…’

  She smiled her dreadful smile and gave a little bow. She was back within twenty minutes. As I said the Domestics were without peer.

  While the others prepared the mixture, covering themselves in floury clouds in the process, I laid out the contents of Poop’s pockets that had been thoughtfully documented by the Neapolitan coppers. It was a sad little bundle. A daguerreotype of some ugly tart – probably his fiancée, two tickets to Rigoletto dated the night of his disappearance and a quantity of soggy paperwork, all depressingly mundane. I searched in vain for any reference to VC. What had his note said? ‘K to V.C.?’ Sounded like a chess move. People do play these agonizingly long-winded games over continents and decades. ‘K’ corresponding to ‘King’…but to ‘V.C.’? Could be an accumulation of medals. Knight of the Garter to Victoria Cross? No, no. Nonsense. Perhaps those opera tickets? Verdi’s Cabal? Was there some link to the renowned tunesmith and his Rigoletto? Had Poop been done to death by a vengeful hunchback dwarf?

  I decided to leave it there for the time being (a good idea as you can probably tell) and turned to the bowl of wet plaster prepared for me by the Domestics. I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves and then carried the mixture over to the slab. With Delilah and one of her pals holding Poop’s shattered head steady, I carefully poured the plaster into the great gaping wound. After setting down the bowl I smoked a cheroot and waited for the stuff to dry.

  It is not a pleasant thing to make a mould from a fellow’s dead bonce but between us we managed to prise the set plaster from the sticky ooze of Poop’s skull. I turned the impression upwards and dragged the lantern towards it.

  ‘Ah!’ I ejaculated. ‘Do you see it? Do you see it?’

  Delilah ambled closer and screwed up her eyes at the plaster impression made by the object that someone had so unsportingly smashed into Jocelyn Poop’s brain.

  ‘Well, Hi’ll retire to Bedlam!’ breathed Delilah. ‘Hit’s a face!’

  VI

  THE WOMAN IN THE VEIL

  A FACE it was. Clearly discernible were waves of hair above a noble brow and hollow eyes; the bridge of an aquiline nose and a suggestion of lip completing the picture. It was either the most forceful head-butt in history or the impression of some kind of bust or statue. I took a rough guess that Poop had been attacked with a relic of the grandeur that was Rome, though precise dating was beyond me. I despatched the plaster cast with the Domestics, confident of a speedy identification by one of Joshua Reynolds’s other agents and also passed on a note to the little man himself recommending that a watch be kept on the strange undertaking firm of Mr Tom Bowler.

  As for me, it was time for that rooting around I had promised myself.

  Back at Downing Street, to change togs, I found I was in receipt of a charming note from Bella Pok. I look forward immensely to our next assignation, it ran. I feel there is much we shall do together.

  Rather!

  I changed into a dark costume and pumps, bundling my other clothes into a heavy bag, then waited for Delilah to arrive in a brougham.

  There is a limit, you see, to what can be gleaned through what the yellow press like to call ‘the proper channels’. As you can imagine, it is only the improper channels that turn up matters of real interest. Having been unable to instigate a thorough search, I prepared, as promised, to have another look inside the home of Professor Frederick Sash.

  Images are removed here

  I am a practised house-breaker and had done my best to look over the layout of the missing scientist’s residence during my interview with his wife. I had myself dropped off a few streets away from the Sash residence and then lay skulking in a clump of hydrangeas until the lights in the place were extinguished.

  It was another sweltering night, heavy with patches of unhealthy-looking mist so that the shrubberies glowed oddly like spider-webs. I slipped on a half-mask and, with a heavy jemmy in one hand and a dark-lantern in the other, padded across the lawn, keeping low until I reached the shelter of the house. Once there, I flattened myself against the brickwork and paused for breath.

  The easiest point of entry to the villa, it seemed to me, was through a small, diamond-paned window in the porchway. I crept around the wall until I reached this, then began an examination of the window. I had the jemmy all ready to prise open the woodwork but then discovered that it was already ajar, no doubt left so due to the heat. I gently pushed the window open to its fullest extent and slid my terribly lithe and nimble frame through it.

  The porch led straight through into the great hallway, its ceiling made up almost entirely of skylights.

&nbs
p; I made my way stealthily past majolica pots stuffed with exotic plants and rows of walnut cabinets, crammed willy-nilly with quantities of blue china.

  I examined each cabinet in turn but felt sure that it was Sash’s study that I needed to explore. I made for the broad staircase, my rubber-soled pumps making not a sound as I ran swiftly upwards. A series of rooms led off a walkway that looked down directly on to the hall below.

  I was making for the first door with great urgency when I heard the unmistakable creak of a floorboard.

  I froze. After a moment, I edged slowly and silently back to the panelled wall, secreting myself in the shadow of yet another cabinet. I peered across the space, struggling to make out anything in the darkness. Yes there, yes! There was a shape, undoubtedly human, moving stealthily up the stairs I had come up.

  It was difficult to be certain from the way it moved whether or not the stranger was an inhabitant or intent on something nefarious. Either way I was in danger. I slipped my hand into my Norfolk and pulled out my revolver, then raised the dark-lantern and prepared to slip back its metal door.

  A loud cough stopped me. The figure stepped into a patch of starlight, revealing itself to be Mrs Sash, her long hair tumbled down over her neck, a glass of milk carried in one hand.

  She cleared her throat again and, oblivious to my presence, moved silently along the corridor to what I presumed was her bedroom. Once the door had closed behind her, I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on.

  Four doors led off the walkway. One I could now eliminate. With the utmost care, I opened the dark-lantern a crack and then, silently, the first door. Within I could make out lumpen black shapes, in all probability the sleeping forms of Sash’s overfed children. One faced the ceiling and was snoring, the other had her hands tucked beneath her face like a child in a nursery picture.

  I stepped back on to the landing and gently closed the door.

  The next room revealed itself to be merely a linen cupboard; I made swiftly for the third. It was locked.

  I bent down to the lock and rammed the jemmy into it. With a fearfully loud crack, the old door sprang open. I glanced swiftly about but no one seemed to have stirred.

  Once inside, I moved to the wall and discovered it covered by thick curtains. I checked to ensure I would remain unobserved and then opened the lantern to its fullest extent. The room smelled of old leather. Books lined the walls.

  This looked rather promisingly like Sash’s study.

  I swung the lantern around the room. The light picked out a bureau and a tall cabinet filled with curiosities. Moving on, I crossed swiftly to the bureau and pushed up the rolled top. Three or four envelopes lay there, in all probability the late post mentioned by Mrs Sash. The professor would never open them now. I opened each of the drawers in turn. Nothing of interest caught my attention – they seemed merely to contain reams of dry scientific discourse. I plunged my hand into the back of the drawers and felt about in case there were any recessed panels or buttons. Real life rarely fails to disappoint and I found no such thing.

  As I turned, however, I noticed on the desk a portmanteau photograph in a tortoiseshell frame. Of the three panels, the facing portraits were of Sash and his wife. The middle picture, though, apparently taken some time in the sixties, showed four men standing in stiffly formal pose. I recognized two of the men at once as younger versions of Sash, whose study I was rifling, and his colleague Verdigris whose portrait I had studied earlier. The next man – willowy and ascetic-looking – I did not know but the fourth seemed very familiar. Swaddled in a blanket and looking prematurely ancient he sat in a wheeled chair and scowled down the decades at me.

  ‘Aha!’ I exclaimed. The man in the wheeled chair was a stranger no more. In a flash I recognized him as none other than Sir Emmanuel Quibble, chief fellow of the Royal Society and the foremost scientific mind of our age. It was well known that he had long ago retired. To, of all places, the Amalfi coast…

  I was musing on this information when the distinctive odour of burnt paper caught my attention. I swung the dark-lantern around and brought its feeble light to bear on the fire-grate, which was revealed to contain a quantity of blackened paper. Had Professor Sash laid a fire in the middle of summer? Or had he – or one of his family – destroyed something of a compromising nature? In my experience nothing is ever incinerated in a grate unless it is of a deliciously compromising nature.

  I almost jumped out of my skin as the door was thrown open and the room illuminated by the yellow glow of an oil-lamp.

  ‘Hold hard!’ yelled some burly chap, whose outline was just discernible in the gloom. At his side, Mrs Sash twittered and wailed in distress. Clearly I would have to retake Advanced Breaking and Entering. Without a second thought I thrust the portmanteau photograph into my jacket, leapt towards the bookcase and brought it crashing down between my discoverers and me. Then I hopped nimbly on to a leather chair, smashed the study window with my jemmy and jumped into the night, hitting the lawn in a neat ball and rolling to my feet. As I pelted away from the place hell for leather, I could hear the household rousing but they were too tardy to catch lucky old Lucifer.

  That next morning, I ran myself a bath. Really, I had to do something about replacing Poplar. The service had dug out a chambermaid to do this sort of thing but although I am one of those johnnies who delight in lording it over their inferiors, I’ve always found that one, indispensable manservant is worth a whole retinue of girls in mob-caps whose presence can only lead, in any case, to babies being left on doorsteps and photogravures in the Police Gazette. I lay steaming for over an hour, my hair pooling above me like weed. How Millais would have loved me then!

  Reluctantly, I dragged myself from the bath and crossed the bare boards to my dressing room. Here, among my treasured wardrobe of fabulous apparel, I would prepare for the work of the day. A note from Miracle had told me he had news on my late professors. I glanced at my watch on the dresser. My appointment was for eleven. I had only two hours to dress!

  I reached Miracle’s studio only a few minutes late and was about to pull at the bell when I remembered that today was the day he took his drawing class. I had passed the Mechanical Institute on the way and returned to it now – a big, black ugly building, concealed behind scrubby bushes and gold-tipped railings – where stood an expensive-looking carriage with two glossy horses at its head. The creatures seemed restless, stamping at the cobbles, inching the carriage forward by degrees despite the best efforts of the groom clutching at their bridles. A sharp, ammoniac smell assailed me.

  Sitting in splendid isolation against the upholstery of the carriage was a thin man, bald beneath his silk topper, his black-gloved hands bulging like burnt sausages as he gripped the head of his cane.

  ‘Can’t you keep them still?’ he snapped. ‘Can’t you?’

  The groom was profuse in his apologies. The vehicle lurched forward again and the bald man scowled. Then he took out a turnip-sized watch from his waistcoat and, looking at it, scowled again.

  Just as I reached the steps to the institute, the door opened, releasing a torrent of ladies on to the street, resembling, in their feathery, chattering finery, nothing so much as the Regent’s Park geese. I tipped my hat to them as they rolled by, averting their eyes and giggling. I had almost reached the door when a latecomer emerged and I had to step back to avoid careering into her.

  Unlike her à la mode classmates, this lady wore a violet-coloured dress in the fashion of ten years back. A large black hat with a heavy veil, like that of a bee-keeper, completely obscured her face.

  She was holding a tan-leather portfolio under her arm and her hands, in long, black evening gloves, fluttered around its handle as though she were in great distress.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ I murmured.

  I stepped to one side to let the curious apparition pass and then turned to see that the bald man from the carriage was standing on the step beneath me, his sour face jutting towards me like that of an angry Mr Punch.
/>   ‘Come,’ he barked, thrusting his arm through the crook of the woman’s free elbow and pulling her past me towards the carriage, shooting back poisonous glances the whole way.

  ‘Charmed!’ I cried, doffing my boater.

  The double doors swung open again, revealing Miracle.

  ‘Hullo, Box,’ he cried, rubbing together his big hands. ‘Come a-spying, eh?’

  Without letting on how close to the mark Miracle was, I pointed my cane towards the carriage. The groom was lashing at the horses as the vehicle turned in the empty road. ‘Who the devil was that?’

  ‘Ah,’ grinned Miracle. ‘The veiled scribbler. She’s a curiosity that one. Name of Mrs Knight. Mrs Midsomer Knight.’

  ‘A dream, is she?’

  ‘According to one of the ladies who caught a glimpse of her in the conveniences, more of a nightmare! Poor devil. Husband might be described as something of a brute. Never lets her out in society. She hardly says a word.’

  ‘Why the veils? Does he beat her?’

  ‘Burnt in a fire years back, I gather.’

  My friend plunged his hands into his pockets and jutted out his lip thoughtfully. ‘It’s a funny thing, Box, but my teaching seems to have had an adverse effect on her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Miracle shrugged. ‘Only that she began well but of late her work has been shocking.’

  ‘Hmm, perhaps school-mastering is not for you, after all. And, Miracle before you fill me in on the nefarious secrets of our missing professors, you should know that you cannot afford to be so ineffective. I took your advice. I now have a pupil of my own!’

  We spent the rest of the morning ensconced in Miracle’s studio drinking far too much and smoking a brace of cigars. His place was quite lovely, possessing a domed glass roof that let summer sunshine flood the pale green walls. Shadier nooks housed Miracle’s super-abundance of landscapes (I abhor landscapes) and still lifes (the Frenchies call them nature morte and I can’t think of a better description).