Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

It was a page of letters, with the headline More Solutions to the Ripper Murders. The letter indicated by his finger was signed R. M. Harcourt, The Pines, Harrow. Another, finishing in the next column, bore the name of J. Jesperson, Gower Street.

“So he may know who you are?”

“As you’ll see by the date, this issue is a year old. I was still a mere student of crime and detection then, unknown to the public.” Finished, he sealed the envelope and held it out to me. “Take this to the post office—” He stopped, with a look of chagrin. “Forgive me.”

“For what? I am your assistant.”

“My manner was too peremptory. I should have—”

I cut him off. “If we’re going to work together, you must stop thinking of me as a female who’ll be mortally offended if you forget to say please.”

“It’s not that.”

I waited.

“I advertised for an assistant, not a servant. I hope we can work together as equals.”

“Understood,” I said, not revealing how pleased I felt. “Also understood is that when time is of the essence, politeness can go hang. And the only reason I am still standing here with this letter in my hand, rather than halfway to the nearest post office, is that I don’t know where that is.”

MR. HARCOURT REPLIED WITH AN INVITATION BY RETURN OF POST, SO THE next day found us on the train rattling through the northwestern suburbs of London, at one time a familiar journey to me. Although I had not been in Harrow for more than ten years, it was the scene of my youth, my father having been a classics master at Harrow School until his untimely death.

However, we had lived in the village on the hill, whereas Mr. Harcourt’s house was almost a mile away, in one of the newer developments that had grown up following the extension of the Metropolitan Line.

Jesperson had said nothing in his letter about a companion, and we had decided my role would be that of Inconvenient Female Relative. Naturally, I would have no interest in the collection—indeed, if I knew what it was, I might well be shocked—so while the men were closeted together, I’d be free to conduct my own investigation. Randall had told Miss Bellamy to expect me.

The Pines was a mock-Tudor affair shielded from the road by the two namesakes that gave it a somewhat secretive and gloomy air. But that was nothing compared to the interior of the house. As I stepped across the threshold, I was gripped by panic. I am sensitive to atmospheres, no matter how much I try to blame it on imagination, and what I felt in that hallway was as bad as any haunted house. But it is difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced such things. If I were describing a smell, I could compare it to a tannery, a slaughterhouse, or a sewer. Only someone with no sense of smell could bear to live there.

Fighting the panic, I looked around for distraction. A large, attractive Chinese vase, green and yellow, had been put into service as a stand for umbrellas and walking sticks. Among the curving wooden handles clustering above the open top, the silver-capped walking stick stood out, commanding attention not simply by its different appearance, but by the grim air of menace it exuded, like a low and deadly hiss.

Of course, I knew at once what it was, and felt appalled. How could they have kept it? Why hadn’t it been broken and destroyed, the wood burnt to ash, the silver head melted down to be remade into something new?

Tearing my horrified gaze away, I spotted the hideous stone gargoyle crouching like a demon near the foot of the stairs, and shuddered at its baleful look before my partner’s light touch on my arm recalled me to the present as he introduced me to the owner of these things.

Mr. Harcourt was a portly, balding man with a luxuriant and well-tended moustache, and—for me, at any rate—a cold and fishlike stare. There was more warmth, and a twitch of a smile, in the greeting he gave Jesperson, leaving me in no doubt that my presence was unwelcome.

Relief came swiftly in the form of a young lady descending the stair. Slender and dark-haired, with a face that was handsome rather

than pretty, she was dressed like a shop assistant or office worker in a crisp, white shirtfront and plain dark skirt. Even smiling warmly in welcome, she had a serious look, her eyes haunted by worry.

“Flora! Exquisite timing, as ever. Although if you had known to expect company you would have worn one of your pretty dresses, I hope,” said Harcourt. He performed hasty introductions and rapidly withdrew with Jesperson behind a solid oak door, leaving us alone in the hall with its sinister atmosphere.

“Perhaps you’d like to see the garden,” said Miss Bellamy, touching my elbow to guide me along a corridor toward the back of the house. As I passed through the door, leaving the house, the taste of open air was almost intoxicating.

“You are sensitive,” she remarked, leading away from the cold back wall of the house, through an arbor, along a path, into a sheltered rose garden.

“I claim no special powers,” I said, “but the atmosphere in that house is . . . extraordinary. I have to wonder how you can live there.”

She nodded slightly. “And yet, you know, most people feel nothing. Mr. Adcocks never did. Mr. Randall’s mood alters when he visits, and I am aware of his unease, yet he will not admit it.”

Although I had not said so to Jesperson, I had toyed with the idea that Miss Bellamy herself might be the killer we sought. The manner of Mr. Adcocks’s death seemed to indicate an attack by a strong and brutal man, an action impossible by most women; nevertheless, I had found that men tended to underestimate the female sex quite as much as they idealized it, and I could imagine a grieving fiancée who was in truth a coldhearted murderer.

But that idea vanished to nothing as soon as I set eyes on her, a slip of a girl, and as we sat down, side by side, on a curving bench in a sunny green spot, the scent of roses and the warm hum of bees filling the air around us, I was utterly certain that this gentle, soft-spoken woman, so concerned about the feelings of others, was incapable of killing another human being, by any means.

“How can you bear to live in that house?” I asked her.

“Don’t forget, I’ve lived there nearly all my life,” she said. “People can get used to almost anything. Imagine someone who must work in a slaughterhouse every day.”

“I imagine such a person would be brutalized and degraded by his work,” I replied. “If the comparison were to someone who must live in a slaughterhouse . . . well, I can’t imagine many who would stick it for long. I’m surprised you never ran away. What was it like when you first came here? Were you terrified?”