04 - Carnival of Criminals (16 page)

“Only… Christmas Day he was so much worse. He burned with
fever and was delirious. He kept saying how his head hurt and his arms and
legs. We tried to send for a doctor but it was Christmas Day…”

Hans stopped again. His face had taken on a haunted look,
Tommy had never seen a man look so grief-stricken in his life. The burden of
guilt Hans had piled on himself was greater than anything he deserved, as far
as Tommy could see.

“Finding a doctor to attend him on Christmas Day must
have been almost impossible.” Tommy said sympathetically.

“Especially when you are German.” Hans replied, though
there was no real resentment in his tone, “Of course, no one understood then
about the influenza epidemic that was about to hit us. Such a blow after the
war. I wonder sometimes why God felt the need to punish us so?”

“I tend to take the more pragmatic view that these things
just happen.”

Hans gave a small nod.

“It was nearly 7 o’clock when we finally found a doctor.
He was not so bad, though he blustered and moaned about his Christmas dinner
being spoiled. He said Jurgen had the flu and he needed rest and fluids. Then
he left and said he would be back in the morning. I suppose he was busy,
because it was not until the day after Boxing Day that he returned. By then
Jurgen was hardly with us. He woke maybe once or twice to take a little drink
of beef tea, then he would slip away. We didn’t need the doctor to tell us it
was a very bad case. He explained how the flu hit people in different ways and
some just didn’t seem able to fight it off. It looked like Jurgen was one of
those sort.” Hans stared at his hands, plaiting his long fingers together,
“Jurgen died on 28 December 1918. The doctor signed a death certificate and
advised us to bury him swiftly. I went through his few possessions looking for
some clue as to his family, but there was nothing except a photograph of his
parents. He had said they lived in Brighton, but there are an awful lot of
Smiths in Brighton and I did not know their first names. Eventually my sister
said we must bury him properly and hope that somehow we would one day find his
family. Leave it in God’s hands she said. So I did, and now here I am.”

Hans went quiet. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked
round a full minute (Tommy counted the seconds) before he spoke again.

“I would like to meet Jurgen’s parents and explain.”

“Only his mother is still alive.” Tommy said, “I shall
send for her at once.”

Annie arrived with the tea things, she looked curiously
at Hans as she placed the tray on the table. For a moment she paused, then she
grabbed up a plate with a small cake on it and placed it in Hans’ lap.

“It’s a Duchess Bun, my mother’s recipe.” She said, “I
hope you will eat it all up, you look as though you could do with a good bit of
cake inside you.”

Hans’ slowly raised his eyes to meet hers.

“You are very kind.”

“Oh, it don’t take much kindness to offer a bit of cake.
But you do look a sad soul. Have you come far?”

“Norwich.”

“And have you settled on a place to stay?”

Hans indicated he had not. The unspoken statement, that
he had not the money to afford a place to spend the night, was recognised by
them all. No doubt he would have whiled away the night hours drifting between
doorways and benches.

“Now here we have a spare bedroom.” Annie continued
stoutly, “And it don’t take much more kindness for me to offer it to you, does
it not Tommy?”

Tommy grinned at her, because it was very plain he was
not being asked permission, but rather was being advised of the situation.

“I shall get out some fresh sheets and you shall spend
the night here, Mr..?”

“Hans Friger.” Hans gave a quick bow of his head from his
seated position.

“Well Mr Friger, I am Annie and I take people as I meet them.
Now eat up your cake and I hope you like dumplings with your dinner.”

A faint smile blossomed on Hans’ face as Annie left the
room once more.

“It is best not to say no to Annie.” Tommy explained,
“And she is a mean hand with her dumplings.”

“I like English dumplings.” Hans said, “And I like
English hospitality.”

“Well I hope you don’t mind, but you may find here we run
by ‘Fitzgerald hospitality’, which tends to mean once we nab you, you won’t get
away.”

Now Hans laughed, it was a good sound and it seemed to
surprise him.

“I really thought it would be awful coming down here.”

“You’ve still got to face Mrs Smith.” Tommy reminded him,
though he was sad to break the happy mood, “I’ll get a message to her, asking
that she might arrive after dinner. Then you can get it over with.”

“Yes.” Hans became solemn again, “I hope she forgives
me.”

“For what?”

Hans pulled a face.

“I’m not really sure. I… I just feel that somehow I could
have done more.”

“Then I think you better begin by forgiving yourself.”

Seylon Hall had been built in 1614, a fabulous old
building of red brick and twisting chimneys. In the eighteenth century, when
the first great guides to the architecture of Brighton were being compiled, a
local vicar had passed by Seylon Hall and declared it a masterpiece. He
sketched the building and from this an engraving was produced and then
reproduced in the Hathaway’s Guide to Brighton and Hove.  After that Seylon
became the favourite view for the amateur artist and the family complained of
the large numbers of people who appeared on their lawn every day in the summer
months to draw or paint the house.

Time, however, had not been kind to the hall. As the
Seylons’ changing fortunes ebbed so too did repair work on the family abode.
Leaks in the roof went unattended, damp on the walls was masked by paint and
the whole place began to rot in on itself. With the dwindling of the family
funds in the nineteenth century, the house showed the first outward signs of
its neglect. The east wing suffered first, the roof caving in after a bad fire
ate through the first floor. An elderly Swedish butler was blamed for the
calamity which resulted in the necessary demolishing of part of the property,
but local thinking was that it had been bound to happen eventually. The stables
went next, blown down in a storm. They had stood empty for decades,
fortunately. Then the west wing bedrooms became uninhabitable due, yet again,
to the roof.

By then the grounds had become overgrown and
unmanageable, though the family still employed a solitary gardener. The once
fine lawn where budding artists had sat and sketched was now a heap of
molehills and daisies. When Joshua Romulus inherited the hall from his father
it was a ramshackle place. The west wing was virtually abandoned, the attics
were in such a bad state the servants refused to go up into them, less they
come crashing back through the floor. Instead they slept in the bedrooms at the
east side of the main hall. Joshua confined himself to one large bedroom on the
west side, nearest the creaking joists and groaning walls of the abandoned
wing. On occasion, it was said, you could hear voices in the forgotten rooms.

Joshua did no more to the house than his parents or
grandparents had. It limped along, just managing to survive long enough to
provide a home for him in his old age. Then, so local legend had it, at just
the moment Joshua went into the family vault the west wing collapsed down on
itself in a flurry of plaster dust and splitting beams. It took most of
Joshua’s bedroom with it. After that everyone knew it was only a matter of time
before the main hall fell. Haste was made to remove what valuables remained,
largely the library, and what was left was scavenged for nearby homes.

On the night of the 12 November 1901, so the story went,
there was a terrible storm and lightning struck the abandoned hall. Flame
engulfed the Seylon home and the conflagration could be seen for miles. By the
time the fire had died down the next morning there was nothing but a hollow
shell left of the ‘masterpiece of Hove’. Local builders salvaged anything they
could, leaving the rest to nature.

Or at least that was the legend Clara told Dr Deáth as
they rode through an old set of gateposts, long shorn of their iron gates. She
had compiled it from several local history books including the one by Joshua
Romulus.

“Time is really rather cruel.” Deáth reflected as his
horse picked its feet over the remains of an old driveway.

An avenue of limes still stood as a reminder of a once
formal and grand entranceway.

“Had the Seylons been sensible they would have sold the
house and established themselves in something more affordable. Or gone into
business.” Deáth continued, gently nudging on the horse with a twitch of the
reins.

“I somehow don’t think that is how one does things when
one is part of the nobility.” Clara smiled.

“Well then, even more foolish!” Deáth laughed.

The avenue dissolved into a long view over what had once
been open grass lawns and parkland. In the eighteenth century the scene would
have been dazzling, with deer grazing and the manicured grass stretching out
like a huge green carpet before the house. Today it looked rather more like
boggy heathland and the horse stumbled a little as they dropped down a shallow
slope.

“Is that it?” Deáth pointed to a small mound ahead, fragments
of stone could just be seen poking through the grass.

“I imagine so.” Clara said.

Deáth negotiated the horse across a patch of barely
visible gravel and then they were trotting across what had once been a formal
lawn. The lumps and bumps ahead slowly resolved themselves into the visible,
rectangular outline of a building. They pulled up just in front of three long
stones, stacked on top of each other, which must have formerly been the steps
up to the door.

Clara jumped off the buggy seat and walked up the steps.
She found herself standing on the last traces of a tiled floor. She scrubbed
her heel on a stone.

“Poor Joshua Romulus. Look at your home!”

“Since we believe Mervin’s stash is in the cellar, I
suggest we make haste and find it before we get soaked.” As Dr Deáth spoke a
raindrop splashed on Clara’s face.

“I agree.”

They split up and went in search of a cellar entrance.
The layout of the old hall was still just visible and Clara theorised a cellar
would be located at the back of the building near the kitchens. Stepping into a
black and white tiled room she found what appeared to be a melted lump of iron;
seemingly the last remains of a cooking range. A little further on there was a
gap in the grass covered stones which suggested a doorway. Just beyond that was
a mass of brambles and, very difficult to see in their midst, a stone staircase
leading into the ground. It seemed to emerge from nowhere and Clara came close
to stumbling straight into the cellar.

“Over here!”

Between then Deáth and Clara removed as much of the
brambles as was possible and revealed a dark hole leading downwards. Deáth
still had the lamp and shone it into the darkness, there was not much to see
beyond a grey set of steps.

“Do you suppose they are safe?” Clara risked a foot on
the top step, it didn’t seem to crumble beneath her.

“I suggest we take it carefully.” Deáth peered down the
hole, “I see far too many deaths caused by falling down cellar steps.”

“That’s a comfort.” Clara braced her foot on the next
step, they were rather steep and it was best to place the foot sideways to get
a grip. She reached out a hand and felt a wall.

“There was one case I recall, a big house like this. The
cellar door was rather poorly placed next to the door for the dining room. One
evening the lady of the house rushed down to dinner, the gas had yet to be lit,
and in her haste she opened the wrong door. I hear that nowadays they keep the
cellar door locked.”

Clara was now treading into darkness, as Deáth held the
lamp, and his stories were not particularly helping. Each footstep was somewhat
a leap of faith as she could not see anything beyond the step she was on.

“That was an accident, but I do know of a servants’
quarrel that resulted in one being pushed by the other down a set of cellar
steps. Poor fellow broke his neck.”

“I can imagine.” Clara felt apprehensively with her hand
along the wall.

“Then there was a case involving an old shop cellar, one
of those ones which have an entrance up through the pavement covered by a
trapdoor. Well this particular trapdoor had seen better days and this rather
solid lady walked over them and it gave way beneath her. She survived, but
there was a fellow stacking boxes in the cellar below whom she landed on and
killed.”

“Really?” Clara wished Deáth would shut-up. She put out
her foot and felt solid ground. She paused for a moment, cautiously felt about
further and relaxed. They had reached the bottom.

Deáth joined her and held up his lamp, it only cast a
thin circle of light, but enough to just make out a brick wall on their right.

“I smell foxes.” He said.

“Right,” Clara took a pace forward, “We were facing the
west wing when we descended, the east wing was behind us, so the far north
corner should be this way.”

She felt her hand along the wall to her right and as she
expected it suddenly fell away revealing a further section of the cellar. They
walked together into a large, black void. It was impossible to know its
boundaries for the light would not stretch far enough. So they kept walking
forward, watching out for stones or roots on the floor that might trip them,
until the light showed them the far wall. They stopped.

“I suggest we try the right hand corner first.” Deáth
said.

“Why?”

“People favour the right side of places for some reason,
if you do tests on a group asking them to randomly choose to go left or right,
they most often go right.”

“Really?” Clara turned her head right into pitch
darkness.

“Or I may have just made that up.” Deáth pondered, “I
thought I read it somewhere?”

“Let’s go right.” Clara decided, not wanting to delay
further.

The cellar was quite large, but was completely empty
aside from the odd scuttling rat. There was a damaged rubber ball and a
forgotten small cap lying on the floor that suggested children had visited the
place to play in, or at least explore.  Perhaps there had been other activities
down here, but it was so dark and dank Clara could not imagine it a place many
people would want to spend time in. They found the right corner and Deáth shone
the light on the ground.

“We have to assume he buried whatever it was he kept his
stash in.” Clara went down on one knee and felt the soil, it seemed a little
less compacted than the dirt around her, but after 15 years who knew what a
floor might look like?

Deáth found a shard of wood propped against the wall and
put it to use as a rudimentary shovel. He dug around in the soil for a while,
making a large circle in the floor without coming across anything in
particular. After about ten minutes he stopped.

“Let’s try the other corner.”

They headed to the other side of the cellar and at once
Clara felt they were in the right place.

“Look!” Drawn on the wall was a black hand print, someone
had taken a piece of charcoal and traced the outline of their hand onto the
wall, repeating the process several times to darken the mark, “That has to be a
sign left by Mervin. He wouldn’t, after all, expect Penny to fudge around in
the dark.”

Deáth cast his light onto the floor, but yet again there
were no obvious marks of disturbance. He picked up the shard of wood and with the
lamp passed to Clara he attacked the floor in the spot just beneath the black
hand mark. They were both surprised when almost at once the shard of wood hit
something solid. Deáth got down on his knees and pried up loose soil with his
fingers. A rectangular hole began to emerge and as Clara cast the light of the
lamp on it something glittered, albeit dully.

“It’s a box!”

It was, in fact, a security box, the sort used by
shopkeepers or restaurant owners to store a day’s takings before it could be
transferred to a safe or bank. As Deáth started to pull on the box it became
plain it was locked.

“There was a key with that note left for Penny.” Clara
pulled out the rusty key from her pocket and fitted it in the lock. The lid
came open and the lamplight shone on bank notes and coins. They had found
Mervin Grimes’ ill-gotten gains.

“I’ll take that.” There was a click behind them. Clara
swung the lamp and saw the ghoulishly outlined face of Gregory Patterson. He
was holding a pistol.

“You followed us here.” Clara said.

“Penny told me all about the stash and the ring, but even
she wasn’t quite sure where Mervin had hidden everything. She didn’t make the
connection between the vault and the ring.”

“We have no interest in the money. You may take it.” Dr
Deáth said, his eyes on the pistol.

“No he may not!” Clara said sternly.

Before Deáth could counter her, she doused the light of
the lamp and they were all plunged into darkness.

“No one move!” Patterson yelled.

“Do you even know how to use that gun?” Clara said from somewhere
in the darkness.

Patterson, unable to see, pointed the gun at shadows.
There was a crunching noise as someone moved, but he couldn’t pinpoint the
spot.

“I only want to retire from that damn shop!” He cried out
to nobody.

“It’s not your money Mr Patterson. For that matter it was
never really Mervin’s either.”

A match flared by Patterson’s ear and he saw Clara
standing by his side out of the corner of his eye. He started to swing round
the pistol. Clara reached out and grabbed his arm.

“Let’s not be silly Mr Patterson. I have already
concussed a gangster this week and I am holding a very heavy lamp at the
perfect angle to bring it down on your skull, which would be most inconvenient
for us both as I am sure the force will smash it.”

Patterson’s arm was trembling under Clara’s fingers.

“You’re not a killer Mr Patterson.” Clara tightened her
grip slightly on his wrist. His fingers twitched and then the gun fell to the
floor, “Dr Deáth, would you mind holding his arms while I relight the lamp?”

Deáth moved behind Patterson and pinned his arms behind
him, while Clara lit another match and rekindled the flame in the oil lamp. It
was good to bring light back to the dark cellar. Clara picked up the pistol,
then pulled the opened security box out of its hole.

“Is there room in your buggy for three?” She asked Deáth.

“Not really.”

“Then we will have to be very cosy, because I’m not
standing out in the rain waiting for you to return for me.” Clara looked
Patterson full in the face, “Is it really so bad running a bookshop?”