The Last Pleasure Garden Page 3

  The two policemen return to the King’s Road, but the wait for a cab is a considerable one, and Webb begins to regret his decision to dismiss the driver that brought them to Chelsea.

  ‘What do you make of it, sir?’ says the sergeant.

  ‘There is no connection between the women that this “Cutter” attacks, Sergeant. I am sure of that much – except that they are in the first bloom of youth. He seems quite particular about that. They have all been from completely different corners of the metropolis, for a start. Ah, which reminds me, did you talk to the “hermit”?’

  ‘Why, do you think he knows who it was, sir?’ says Bartleby with a grin.

  ‘Sergeant,’ says Webb in gruff admonition.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I did. No joy there. He’s an old fellow, theatrical sort, made a point of telling me how he knew Macready. Was in his “cave” the whole time. The thing is, he wears spectacles when he’s not on duty. He might have second sight but I wouldn’t say his regular eyes are up to much.’

  ‘Hmm,’ replies Webb.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t the same man that stabbed Miss Hockley as attacked the others,’ continues Bartleby. ‘Maybe it was more personal-like?’

  ‘Yes, well, you should look into the girl’s circumstances,’ replies Webb. ‘That would be wise. At least you are thinking it through. But did you see her dress?’

  ‘Her dress, sir?’

  ‘I meant to point it out when we saw her at the infirmary. It looked to me like the cut of a pair of scissors – not a puncture or a gash like a knife might make, but a series of three or four sharp lacerations along a line, then the tear. No, I rather feel it is the same man. You know, I am not even sure if he meant to stab her.’

  Webb pauses and frowns. ‘Telegraph the mad-houses in London and the counties. A madman seems the most likely explanation. If it is some escaped lunatic, I don’t want anything missed.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  John Boon opens his afternoon’s post. The first item is, however, not at all to his liking: it is a pamphlet of a biblical nature, containing several odious comparisons between the entertainments on offer at Cremorne Gardens, the ‘New Sodom upon the Thames’, and the Canaanites’ worship of idols.

  Boon rips the paper to shreds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Rose! Must you constantly watch the street? I have told you before.’

  ‘Sorry, Mama. I was just looking out for Father.’

  Mrs. Perfitt looks indulgently at her daughter.

  ‘Rose, I will speak to him as soon as he comes home. I am sure he will say yes.’

  Charles Perfitt is a tall, well-proportioned man, forty-five years of age, with smartly trimmed whiskers of the mutton-chop variety. Like most of the gentlemen arriving at Chelsea Station of an evening, he wears an immaculate business suit and hurries off the train as quickly as possible, walking briskly down the platform to the exit. He makes a point, however, of nodding to the booking-clerk as he passes the ticket office. It is his custom, upon his return from the City, to pay this small homage to the old party in question. For the clerk has taken the receipts of the London Western Extension Railway at Chelsea for as many years as Mr. Perfitt can recall. The old man, of course, nods back. Mr. Perfitt, as satisfied with this transaction as with any of his cleverly calculated dealings with jobbers upon the Stock Exchange, then turns his steps towards the King’s Road.

  Mr. Perfitt’s journey is an agreeable walk by any standard. The route passes the Italianate towers of St. Mark’s Training College – which look rather pleasing in the evening light, hinting at some forgotten corner of Tuscany – and, upon the opposing side of the King’s Road, lie the famous nurseries of Messrs. Veitch, whose rose gardens and treasured exotic blooms, concealed by a high wall, lend a sweet fragrance to the surrounding suburban streets. But Mr. Perfitt does not linger, even as he passes the gates to Cremorne Gardens. In fact, it is only a matter of five minutes or so before he arrives at his front door. Once inside, he makes his way to the first-floor drawing-room, as is his custom. He finds his wife pacing rather nervously around the hearth-rug.

  ‘Charles! You are back at last!’ she exclaims.

  ‘I find it’s rather expected of me, this time of day, Caroline.’

  ‘I thought you might have gone to your club.’

  Mr. Perfitt sits down in the nearest armchair. ‘Now why should I do that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ replies Mrs. Perfitt, a little annoyed at his calm response. ‘I have such news – you will never guess!’

  ‘Tobacco running high? I know already. They say it’s the scarcity of western leaf. I should have bought last month. Would have made quite a tidy sum.’

  ‘Charles, for pity’s sake, don’t tease. Alice Watson called this afternoon . . .’

  Charles Perfitt rolls his eyes.

  ‘Alice Watson called this afternoon . . .’ says Mrs. Perfitt, but then hesitates. ‘No, wait, I must find Rose.’

  Charles Perfitt takes a deep breath, as his wife bustles from the room, almost catching the hem of her dress in the door. She returns, in a matter of moments, with her daughter in tow.

  ‘Out with it,’ says Mr. Perfitt, observing his daughter’s rather animated and cheerful expression. ‘I can see it will cost me money.’

  ‘Papa, don’t be a beast!’ exclaims his daughter.

  ‘Alice Watson called today,’ continues Mrs. Perfitt, ‘and she has spare tickets for a ball at the Prince’s Ground upon Saturday. It is such a stroke of luck!’

  Mr. Perfitt raises his eyebrows. ‘Are you quite sure? Thought it was strictly the bon ton at the Prince’s?’

  ‘Alice, as you well know, is a personal acquaintance of Lady Astbury, who herself is a close friend of the Princess Louise.’

  ‘I do know rather, as she never ceases from telling me. I thought one had to be introduced at Court before the Prince’s Club would so much as glance at you.’

  Mrs. Perfitt looks askance.

  ‘Not that you aren’t good enough for such society, my dear,’ adds her husband, drily.

  ‘It is a charity night, Charles, for the Society for the Suppression of something or other. A grand ball. Members may bring guests.’

  Rose Perfitt takes her opportunity. ‘May we go, Papa, please?’

  Her father says nothing for a moment.

  ‘Very well. I do not see why not.’

  Mrs. Perfitt smiles. ‘I should think so too.’

  Rose, meanwhile, bends down to her father, and kisses him lightly on the cheek. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Now,’ continues Mrs. Perfitt briskly, ‘there is the matter of a new dress. I will send a note to Alice. We must find out what her Beatrice is wearing.’

  Mr. Perfitt looks at his daughter significantly. ‘There, I told you it would cost me money.’

  ‘Papa!’

  Mr. Perfitt looks reprovingly back at his daughter, but then turns his attention to the magazines kept by his chair, in a wooden rack by the fire-place. He pulls out one item and brandishes it in his hand.

  ‘I don’t recall a subscription to this, Caroline.’

  Mrs. Perfitt looks down, distracted from her mental calculations on the cost of certain fabrics suitable for ball-gowns, and glances at the cheaply-bound sheets.

  ‘Ah, you have Mrs. Featherstone to thank for that.’

  Mr. Perfitt flicks through the pages of pamphlet. ‘She called again?’

  ‘My dear,’ replies Mrs. Perfitt, ‘you know she makes a point of it; she visits every house in the street at least once a week.’

  ‘Well,’ says Mr. Perfitt, hastily putting the rather inky paper down, ‘I suppose we shall never run short of reading matter. I just wish Featherstone might get his way and the place might close. At least then we could all be done with it.’

  ‘They can’t close the Gardens, Papa!’ protests Rose.

  ‘My dear girl,’ says Mr. Perfitt, ‘you do not know what goes on there nowadays. Everyone in Chelsea would be grateful to see it go. Am I n
ot right, Caroline?’

  ‘Of course you are,’ replies Mrs. Perfitt, taking her daughter’s hand. ‘Come on, my dear, we will go and look at your wardrobe. We have lots to do.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Whatever their views upon Cremorne Gardens, it must be admitted that many of the inhabitants of Edith Grove look to the heavens at the mention of a certain Mrs. Bertha Featherstone. For she constantly appears uninvited in their drawing-rooms, in the aid of one good cause or another. Moreover, her husband, the Reverend Featherstone, is not the ordained minister of the parish, but rather one of several staff members employed by the National Society at St. Mark’s Training College, an institution for the instruction of Christian school-masters. Thus, Mrs. Featherstone does not even call upon her neighbours ex officio. It is, perhaps, something of a testimony to her character that she persists with such enthusiasm and diligence, and that she does rather well for the Society for the Suppression of Vice and several other august bodies.

  As Mr. Perfitt calls her to mind, however, Mrs. Featherstone has already finished her round of calls for the afternoon and returned home to St. Mark’s College. Indeed, her rather stout, corseted form is quite striking as she enters the grounds. She receives a particularly servile bow from the gate-keeper, and there is something of the ironclad battleship about her as she glides towards the suite of rooms that belong to her husband. She finds him bent over his books, preparing his monthly report upon one of his pupils – not one of the College’s trainee pedagogues, but rather one of the boys who attends the College’s schoolroom, to act as an experimental subject. Mr. Featherstone, a grey-haired man in his late fifties with rather aquiline features, looks up at his wife as she enters the room.

  ‘Do you know Hughes, Bertha? Capital little chap. His Euclid is excellent.’

  Mrs. Featherstone states that she is sure she does not. She looks around the study. ‘Augustus, has Jane not done this room?’

  Mr. Featherstone puts down his pen and looks up. ‘How am I to know such things?’

  Mrs. Featherstone runs her finger along the surface of the nearby chiffonier. ‘I’ll swear she has not.’

  ‘There is no need to swear anything, Bertha. Really.’

  Mrs. Featherstone, however, not one to let a matter rest, proffers her dusty forefinger to her spouse.

  Mr. Featherstone gives in. ‘Then have words with her, if you must. But I sometimes think that you do pick at the servants, dear.’

  Bertha Featherstone’s face turns rather dark. Her husband, sensing he has gone a little too far, tries to add a note of contrition to his voice. ‘Bertha, you might open the evening post.’

  Mrs. Featherstone obliges. She takes up the pile of letters, and applies the silver letter-opener provided by her husband, with a vigour that disturbs his concentration and altogether defeats the object of her assistance. As she sorts through each one, she places the opened letters in two neat piles upon the chiffonier, one for more urgent items, one for the remainder. Or, rather, she does so until she comes to a particular envelope, whose contents are quite different from the daily ecclesiastical correspondence with which she is familiar.

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaims Bertha Featherstone. ‘This is dreadful!’

  Her husband, quite startled, gets up from his desk.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘Augustus,’ she says, clutching his arm in a fashion with which he is quite unfamiliar, ‘I’d never have believed it.’

  ‘Whatever is it?’

  Mrs. Featherstone does not release her grip.

  ‘You must call the police, Augustus. This instant. It says he intends to kill you!’

  It is late in the evening when, having been summoned by the local constabulary, Sergeant Bartleby sits down in the room that serves as the Featherstones’ parlour at St. Mark’s College. His slightly awkward posture in the armchair is suggestive of a certain degree of discomfort and it is not merely the chair’s ageing upholstery. For there is something rather uncomfortable and stuffy about the room itself, not least the heavy velvet curtains, which drape the windows. Indeed, it is altogether a dull, sombre sort of room, plainly decorated, whose only obvious nod to ornamentation is a glass-domed bell-jar that sits upon the mantelpiece. The jar in question contains a stuffed owl, perched on a little branch, which, thanks to some considerable artifice in its re-creation, possesses a peculiarly lively expression. An uncharitable person might say considerably more lively than that of its owner.

  ‘Sergeant is your rank?’ asks Mrs. Featherstone, seated opposite the policeman.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ replies Bartleby, ‘of the Detective Branch.’

  ‘I rather expected an inspector.’

  ‘It is quite late, ma’am,’ replies Bartleby. ‘I assure you I will consult with Inspector Webb tomorrow, once we have the facts.’

  ‘I should hope you will,’ replies Mrs. Featherstone.

  ‘I gather you insisted on seeing someone from the Yard, rather than a local man?’

  ‘Of course. This is a serious business, Sergeant. But here is my dear husband at last.’

  Bartleby stands up as the Reverend Featherstone appears at the door, still dressed in the long black gown, which marks him out as one of the masters at St. Mark’s.

  ‘This is the police sergeant, Augustus,’ says Mrs. Featherstone, laying a rather negative stress on Bartleby’s rank.

  Bartleby offers the clergyman his hand. ‘Sergeant Bartleby, sir.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sergeant. A meeting; I have certain responsibilities in the College, I am afraid. They cannot be abrogated. Please, sit.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, sir,’ says Bartleby, eager to proceed. ‘Now, I gather from Mrs. Featherstone that you received an unfortunate letter earlier this evening?’

  ‘Not merely “unfortunate”, Sergeant,’ says Mrs. Featherstone. ‘Do show him, Augustus.’

  ‘My dear, please,’ replies her husband, handing Bartleby a folded piece of note paper. ‘This is the item my wife is concerned about. It came in the post.’

  Bartleby opens the letter and reads it through:

  Dear Feathers,

  Damn all your infernal squawking – you are the honest nuisance in the Gardens. I know you and Mother Goose and I will have my say. I would beware of dark lanterns and sharp daggers, if I were in your shoes. I have talked to the United Brotherhood of Chelsea and they all say I should set your little castle in flames, and roast you, old bird. I will do it too, you just wait, and I will carve up the meat good and proper.

  THE CUTTER

  The sergeant is silent for a moment. ‘The red ink is a nice touch,’ he says.

  ‘You mean it is not . . .’

  ‘Not blood, ma’am, no, I shouldn’t say so. Doesn’t dry quite that colour, if you think about it.’

  ‘But these threats, Sergeant,’ says Mrs. Featherstone.

  ‘It is a very serious matter. That is why I specifically asked the constable for Scotland Yard. I mean to say, we know this awful creature is in earnest – the wretched girl he assaulted only the other night . . .’

  Bartleby nods, then looks up at Reverend Featherstone. ‘Forgive me saying so, sir, but you don’t seem so concerned as your wife.’

  The clergyman smiles. ‘I think it is an idle boast, Sergeant. Someone hopes to deter me from my mission. I can readily defend myself, if needs be. I have the Lord on my side.’

  ‘I see. And, forgive me, what is your “mission”, sir?’

  ‘Why, to remove the stain of Cremorne Gardens from Chelsea. I expect you have come across my tracts?’

  ‘Well,’ says Bartleby, apologetically, ‘Chelsea’s not my part of the world.’

  ‘Wait one moment, Sergeant,’ says Mrs. Featherstone, quitting her seat. ‘I will get one for you.’

  Bartleby is too late to protest, as Mrs. Featherstone bustles from the room. ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he suggests, ‘you might just give me the gist of your, ah, work?’

  ‘You must have heard of Cremorne Gardens’ ill-
fame, Sergeant? It goes back a good number of years. Mr. Boon is the most recent lessee; I am sure you have heard of him.’

  ‘Met him today, as it happens, sir.’

  ‘Did you? Well, his so-called “management” has made matters much worse. Even if one puts aside the noise and inconvenience of the place – just try and walk along the King’s Road of a night! There are fast young men and loose girls in every state of degradation and vice. Quite disgusting.’

  ‘I have heard something of the kind, sir,’ replies the Sergeant, tactfully.

  ‘And it is quite true,’ says Mrs. Featherstone emphatically, overhearing as she re-enters the room. ‘Here, Sergeant,’ she continues, offering him a pamphlet, ‘you may keep it, we have others. You will find it quite informative.’

  ‘“Dancing to Satan’s Hornpipe in Chelsea,”’ reads Bartleby out loud.

  ‘You would not believe what goes on behind those gates, Sergeant,’ says the clergyman’s wife. ‘And we call ourselves a Christian country.’

  ‘Yes, well. Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much. But you think there is nothing in this letter, sir?’ says Bartleby, turning back to address the Reverend. ‘You think it is all bluster?’

  ‘It is the work of some crank. Utter nonsense – the “United Brotherhood of Chelsea” indeed!’ Reverend Featherstone pauses for thought. ‘Unless, of course, he is trying to intimidate me. But I doubt that even he would stoop so low.’

  ‘Who?’ asks Bartleby.

  ‘Boon, Sergeant! Who else? I have the measure of that man, I can tell you.’

  ‘Forgive me, if those are your feelings on the matter, why did you ask Scotland Yard to get involved, sir?’ asks Bartleby.

  ‘To be frank, Sergeant, my dear wife—’

  ‘Augustus!’ exclaims Mrs. Featherstone. ‘Really, it quite terrified me.’

  Bartleby looks hard at Mrs. Featherstone. There is something about her imposing manner that suggests it would be very difficult indeed to do such a thing; nonetheless, he does not contradict her display of womanly feeling.