The Scent of Murder (33 page)

With simultaneous cries they tumbled through a rotting trapdoor. Dody landed hard, feet-first, on some kind of heavy wooden object. Her ankle buckled, bolts of pain shot up her leg and she could not help but cry out. The air was dank as a cave’s. She took some musty breaths and found herself in a domed enclosure full of dull grey objects looming on all sides.

Movement. One of the dark shapes shifted and Edie’s form took shape. The girl climbed to her feet, apparently unhurt.

‘Where are we?’ Edith whispered. The shock of the fall seemed to have restored some measure of sanity to the girl.

‘Inside the old ice house, I think,’ Dody said, pulling herself up using what appeared to be a large wooden barrel. She ached all over. The splintered trapdoor had torn her coat and several layers of skin, she suspected. Inadvertently she put some weight on her ankle. Pain flared and she stifled a cry — it was badly sprained. But it could have been worse, she supposed; the bone did not appear broken, and at least she had not hit her head and lost consciousness. She craned her neck towards the last slivers of light glowing feebly through the jagged remnants of the trapdoor. They must have fallen at least twelve feet.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the dark objects became clearer; they seemed to be mainly barrels and stacked crates. Dody plunged her hand into her skirt pocket and extracted her damp matches, holding her breath until one sputtered to life, casting a pale glow upon the suppurating brick walls. She shivered. The place had the look and feel of some of the older mortuaries she had worked in.

In the wavering light of the flame, she noticed that the barrel nearest her had the word cognac stamped upon it. Wooden crates were piled haphazardly on slatted benches arranged around the circumference of the ice house, where food and ice had once been stored. Several pairs of clawed feet hung on hooks driven into the walls. The bodies of long-dead birds — nothing but disintegrating feather sacs — hung from others. Dody gulped down rising nausea and took a step towards the door, then stopped with a cry of pain.

‘Are you all right, miss?’ Edie asked.

Dody had to wait a moment for the pain to subside before she could answer. ‘I’ve hurt my ankle,’ she said steadily. ‘But no matter. That door leads to a tunnel and then outside. Test the door, Edie; see if it’s locked. I can’t move far, but you might be able to get help.’ Provided you can keep your head, she thought to herself. The girl was so traumatised that at times she seemed only a breath away from hysteria.

Edie turned the handle and pushed against the door. ‘Locked, miss.’

The match sputtered out. Dody lit another. ‘Try those crates on that bench, then. See if you can balance them on top of one another and climb out through the hole in the roof.’

Edith attempted to lift one of the crates and failed. She tested the others. ‘Too ’eavy, I can’t budge ’em,’ she said, panting with the exertion.

Dody lurched over and tested a crate herself. Yes, too heavy to lift, even if the two of them tried together. Perhaps they could lever the crates open and remove some of the contents to make them easier to shift. The wooden crates were nailed shut, but they might be able to smash the lids with something — one of the paving stones, perhaps?

She told Edie to kick at one of the paving stones to see if it could be prised away from the others, but it was jammed tight. To work one out would take too much time.

‘What we going to do, miss?’

‘It’s all right,’ Dody answered as calmly as she could. ‘Let me think.’

There had to be a drain somewhere for the water from the melting ice to escape, to prevent the place from being in a constant state of flood. Several tin buckets were placed about the floor, no doubt used for bailing water when the drains were challenged to overflowing.

Dody lit another match and peered once more at the gentle slope of paving beneath her feet. As she had guessed, spoon drains embedded in the pavers ran from beneath each of the slatted benches and joined at the lower end of the ice house, channelling into an enclosed pipe in the wall at the lowest part of the sloping floor. The pipe looked to be about eighteen inches in diameter.

‘Could you fit through that pipe, E—’

A high-pitched scream cut into Dody’s words. The girl scrabbled behind her and clutched at her waist, just as she had when they first met in the kitchen yard. Edie pointed, trembling, towards the jagged circle of grey light above them. Dody followed her hand towards the blurry outline of a man’s face.

‘Hello down there!’

Dody almost collapsed with relief.

Edie let out another piercing scream, the whites of her eyes flashing in terror.

Slapping her hand against Edie’s mouth, Dody whispered, ‘It’s all right; whoever it is will help us get out of here,’ then called, ‘It’s Doctor McCleland. I fell through the ice-house roof. Can you please help me out?’

‘Who else is with you? I heard screaming.’

‘A young girl. I’ll explain when you get us out of here.’

Edie gulped out a sob. At the risk of being bitten, Dody pressed her hand more firmly onto the girl’s mouth. Too hard. Edie collapsed against her in a swoon.

‘Are you hurt?’ the voice enquired.

‘I have sprained my ankle,’ Dody said as she lowered Edie’s body gently to the floor.

‘Give me a minute and I’ll open the door.’

After some seconds the circular door handle turned, but the door didn’t move. ‘It’s all right, I’m coming. I need to find the key. I expect Fitzgibbon leaves it hidden somewhere hereabouts. Ah, here it is, under a stone.’

The lock clicked and Mr Montague pushed open the door. He was holding one of the lanterns from the passageway, which he had lit. ‘Doctor McCleland, what on earth are you doing down here?’

‘I fell through the trapdoor,’ she said. ‘But thank God you have found us, Mr Montague. There’s a maniac out there, the Master from the workhouse, who chases young girls for sport.’

‘Really? Must have been the dogs I heard. Luckily I don’t pay attention to local superstition. I often go riding around here.’ He drew her attention to his expensive riding clothes, before casting the glow of his lantern on Edie’s prone form. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Hysteria. But she will be all right once she is safe and tucked up in bed. We must take her back to the Hall and then inform the police.’

Mr Montague gazed around the ice house and chuckled. ‘Smuggling. Typical. I’ve long suspected Sir Desmond has been involved in something of this nature. He has one of the best cellars this side of London and it’s always perplexed me how he can afford it.’

Edith opened her eyes and moaned. When her bleary eyes focused on Mr Montague, her whole body tensed. ‘Don’t ’urt me, Master …’

Montague snapped, ‘Silence!’ and lashed out at Edie’s head with his foot.

Too late. Dody had heard and seen all she needed. Without thought for her own safety, she flung herself at the Master of the workhouse.

‘The drain, Edie, the drain!’ she cried as she attempted to shove Montague against the ice-house wall. In her peripheral vision she saw Edie scrambling on hands and knees toward the drain. Would she fit through? There was no time to find out; Montague flung her to the ground and dived for the girl’s feet.

‘Slippery little bitch!’ he bellowed as Edie disappeared into the gloom.

Dody hauled herself up with the aid of a barrel. ‘She’s gone; you may as well give up now, Montague. Your sport is over.’

Montague turned his rage upon Dody. Powerful hands seized her throat, his thumbs digging cruelly into her windpipe. The pain was excruciating. Dody tried to prise his fingers from her neck but his grip was too tight. She dug her nails into his knuckles. His fingers slackened momentarily and she gasped for air. He dodged her useless kicks to his groin and tightened his hold again. Her head was spinning, her vision fading. There must be something she could do. And then she remembered: the scissors! She allowed her body to slacken, dropped her arms to her sides, while her right hand inched towards her coat pocket. She gripped the scissors like a dagger and lunged.

The end of the blades pierced Montague’s throat, crunching through cartilage and unleashing a spray of mucous and blood. His hands left her neck and flew to his own to stem the sickening flow. Dody shrank back into the wall, body shaking, heart pounding, no idea what to do next.

He decided for her.

Keeping one hand tight against his throat wound, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pistol. He cocked the gun and aimed it at her chest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Pike and the black dog panted along a badger track on the riverbank, following Fitzgibbon as he was carried downstream by the current, this time failing to reach safety anywhere along the water’s rushing course.

At one stage the river path came to an abrupt halt, an eroded bank of crumbling dirt and shale blocking the way. Pike and the dog were forced to skirt around the small avalanche, taking a detour through the woods before making their way back to the river again.

He saw no sign of Fitzgibbon when he returned to the bank. The light had all but faded. He called into the gloom, paused to catch his breath, bent over and put his hands on knees.

To his surprise his call was answered by a high-pitched cry: ‘’Elp me, I’m over ’ere!’

Pike straightened and peered around. A head appeared from a drainage pipe in the bank, not twenty yards ahead of him. The dog barked and joined him as he ran towards it.

A young girl pulled her head back into the pipe like a tortoise into its shell, heaving a rusted grille back into place before her with a clank. ‘Get that thing away from me!’ she cried.

‘It’s all right, the dog won’t hurt you,’ Pike called back.

When the girl failed to answer him, Pike unbuttoned his braces, threaded them through the dog’s collar and tied it to a sapling.

He bent down and called through the grille into the pipe. ‘My name’s Chief Inspector Pike and I am from Scotland Yard. I have no intention of hurting you, miss, and I have tied up the dog. Please, show yourself.’

Pike held his breath and strained his eyes. Finally the grille opened again and a small shape slithered into the twilight. Thin as a pin, the girl wore a torn dress and clutched at a sodden shawl stretched tight across her shoulders.

‘Are you all right, miss?’ Pike asked. He edged closer. ‘Miss?’ he enquired again.

‘The doctor’s trapped in the ice ’ouse,’ she gulped. ‘The Master’s there too and he’s going to hurt her. Please, sir, you gotta ’elp.’

Just then a shot pierced the darkness of the wood. The sound turned Pike’s blood to ice. ‘Take me there. Now,’ he ordered.

‘I can’t, I can’t! The dogs’ll get me!’

Pike showed her his revolver. ‘Not when I have this.’

The gun seemed to provide the girl with a degree of comfort and she pointed into the woods with a trembling finger. ‘Over there, I think.’

They ploughed their way through the undergrowth towards a vague hump in the ground covered in low vegetation. All at once, a pack of rushing hounds swirled about them. The girl shrieked and hid behind Pike, clutching at his waist. He tried to hush her but she proceeded with such a weeping and wailing that creeping into the ice house by stealth was now impossible. He fired a shot into the air and scattered the hounds.

Some of the girl’s anxiety seemed to ease. She pulled herself together, took him to the top of the mound and showed him the splintered trapdoor.

‘Dody?’ he called through the hole.

‘Down here!’

Alive. Thank God. Her voice had never sounded sweeter. Pike could have collapsed with relief. Instead, he asked the girl to help him find the ice-house door.

‘The door’s locked, sir,’ the girl said. ‘I ’eard the Master tell ’er so.’

Right. Down the hole he must go. He clambered back up the mound, dropped to the ground and pushed his legs over the edge. As he was about to make his move, the girl squeezed his arm tightly to arrest his progress. The hounds were returning. Pike stifled a sigh and indicated for her to go through the hole first. He took her by the wrists and lowered her as gently as he could until his arms could stretch no further. He heard her drop softly to the ground and followed straight after her, his heavier landing causing a painful protest from his bad knee.

‘Matthew!’

He lit a match, followed Dody’s cry, and saw her leaning across the form of a man. A terrible sound, wet and wheezing, burbled up from the man’s throat.

Dody was all business. ‘This is the workhouse Master,’ she told him. ‘He was chasing Edith with his hounds for sport. He has been pursuing helpless girls for years in this fashion. It is he who shot the girl whose skeleton we found.’ The gurgling increased, as if the man were trying to say something. ‘Don’t attempt to speak if you value your life, Mr Montague.’ To Pike she went on, ‘He came at me and I was forced to stab him with my scissors in self-defence.’

‘Scissors?’

‘From my coat pocket.’

‘I heard a gunshot. I thought …’ Pike found himself lost for words.

‘Fortunately he missed and dropped the gun,’ Dody said matter-of-factly.

The match sputtered out and Pike lit another. Both of Dody’s hands were occupied with keeping the lips of Montague’s throat wound together. Pike picked up Montague’s pistol from the brick-paved floor and looked at it briefly — a .22 Smith & Wesson. Quite possibly the gun used to murder Dody’s skeleton girl — who might well prove to be Tristram’s sister.

He looked at Montague without sympathy. What kind of a man, he wondered, would shoot a young girl in the back of the head? He answered his own question; he’d come across a few like this in Bloemfontein prison camp. Officers and men alike, whose passions seemed only to be aroused by the fear they provoked and the control they wielded over others.

Pike knew he couldn’t trust the girl with Montague’s gun and slipped it into Dody’s coat pocket. ‘Better than scissors,’ he said under his breath. More loudly, he said, ‘If he threatens you in any way, shoot him. Clear?’ Dody nodded. ‘Did you hear that, Montague?’

Montague failed to make a sound.