Blackstone and the House of Secrets (The Blackstone Detective series Book 3) Read online

  Blackstone and the House of Secrets

  Sally Spencer

  Copyright © Sally Spencer 2004

  First published as ‘Blackstone and The Golden Egg’ in 2004 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Vicky, and baby Michael

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Extract from Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death by Sally Spencer

  Prologue

  Central Russia — Late Summer 1899

  Count Rachinsky’s country estate was justly famed for its hunting and shooting, and the royal party had had a glorious and bloody day, in the course of which several score of feathered creatures had met the violent fate they had been bred solely to fulfil. The shoot had been followed by a twelve-course meal — relatively modest by Russian standards — and once that had been dispensed with, the company had ambled through to the smaller of the two ballrooms, where there had been more drinking and some dancing.

  The Prince of Wales had enjoyed himself tremendously, but he was quite ready to retire to his bed by the time the party finally showed signs of breaking up in the early hours of the morning. He had been drinking himself, but he was not drunk — food, women and gambling rated much higher than alcohol on his scale of indulgences — and so those who were later told of what had happened were quite prepared to accept his account of events.

  That account ran as follows: he had been asleep for some time when he heard a scuttling sound in the corner of the room. He had thought at first that it might be a rat, for however many servants his Russian hosts employed to keep their rodents down, this was the countryside, where vermin roamed free in the barns and outhouses. The intrusion of the furry alien annoyed the Prince, but did not alarm him, for — despite his increasing girth and shortness of wind —he still considered himself to be a manly man who could well look after himself. Thus, instead of calling for the burly Russian peasant who had been deputed to stand guard outside his door, he turned his mind to what weapon he could use against the intruder.

  There was his hairbrush — solid silver, a gift from his sister, the Dowager Empress of Germany — but it would be a pity to use such a magnificent piece of workmanship to douse the life of such a lowly creature as a rat.

  There were his boots, but his valet would surely have taken them away, to shine them to perfection for the next morning’s shoot.

  What, then, could he employ for his violent purpose? Perhaps, on reflection, it would be best to call for the help of the burly muzhik on the other side of the door after all.

  It was while he was still musing on the problem that he heard a slightly grating sound, which at first he found hard to place. Then, as if to shed light on the matter, an actual light appeared — or rather the evidence of light, since the naked flame itself was shielded from his eyes by the bulky frame which was bending over his dressing table.

  Not a rat, then!

  A man!

  A man who had had the temerity to enter the royal bedchamber — to soil the royal possessions with his common touch.

  It was outrage, rather than fear, which flooded through the Prince’s corpulent frame, and it would have been outrage which was expressed through the royal mouth, had not a foul rag, smelling of some noxious chemical, been thrust down hard on the lower half of his face.

  For several seconds he struggled against this further violation of his royal personage, then his brain gave in to the fumes and he fell into a troubled unconsciousness.

  It seemed like only moments later — though in fact several hours had passed — that the Prince felt something damp being pressed against his forehead. With an effort, he opened his eyes. His vision was cloudy at first, but when it cleared he found himself looking up at the concerned face of his host, Count Rachinsky.

  “Oh, Your Royal Highness,” wailed the Count, his voice thick with anguish and concern. “What can I say? To think that this should have happened to you under my roof. The shame of it! The humiliation!”

  Even in his confused state, it seemed to the Prince of Wales that the Count was more concerned with soliciting sympathy for himself than in bestowing it on his guest.

  “What happened?” he demanded roughly.

  “A terrible thing” the Count said, stating the obvious. “At some time in the night the muzhik I left to guard you must have fallen asleep. I would order the man to be severely punished, but unfortunately, while he was in dereliction of his duty, an intruder seems to have cut his throat.”

  “Two intruders!” said the Prince.

  “Two?”

  Yes, it had to be two, the Prince was sure of that. There had been the one at the other side of the room who had struck the match, and the second who had stuffed the foul rag over his royal mouth.

  “I swear to you, on my honour as a gentleman, that I will find them,” the Count promised. “And that once I do have them in my power, their lives will not be worth a kopek.” He paused for a moment. “But what did these intruders do to you, Your Royal Highness? Did they harm you?” Another pause, even longer and more portentous this time. “Do you think that these villains might perhaps have stolen something?”

  “One of them was over by my dressing table,” the Prince said. And though the words had left his mouth, they also stayed inside his head, echoing around in every corner of his brain.

  One of them was by my dressing table! One of them was over by my dressing table!

  “Oh God!” he moaned. “Oh merciful God, no!”

  Fresh alarm spread around the room.

  “Look at him! He has gone so pale,” said an unidentified voice to the Prince’s left.

  “Is he having an attack, do you think?” asked a second concerned voice to his right.

  “Your Royal Highness…” the Count said worriedly.

  “They can’t have taken it,” the Prince moaned.

  “Taken what?”

  “They… simply… can’t… have… taken… it,” the Prince repeated, his voice sounding increasingly desperate.

  “What is it that you think might be missing?” the Count asked. “Is it something of particular value to you? Would you like me to check to see if it is still there?”

  “No!” the Prince gasped, with what little calm and majesty he could summo
n at that particular moment.

  “Are you sure?” the Count pressed. “It would not take me a second.”

  “Please do not look,” the Prince said, almost begging now. “It’s of no immediate importance. I will search myself, when I’m feeling a little stronger.”

  Chapter One

  The prison was quiet that early September morning, Inspector Sam Blackstone thought as he strode down the long stark corridor.

  Unnaturally quiet.

  Often, during the course of his career, he had walked these corridors and heard the moaning of prisoners wrapped up in their troubled sleep — a moaning so disturbed that it had managed to penetrate even the thick iron doors. Sometimes he had sensed the slight reverberation of tin plates being tapped against pipes, as the solitary prisoners had attempted — despite the severe punishments they knew they would suffer if they were caught at it — to communicate with their fellow inmates.

  But not that day. That day, he had only the clicking of his own heels on the stone floor to keep him company and mark out his progress.

  The silence did not surprise him. In this most desperate of desperate places, there was always an extra air of despondency on the morning of an execution, and though no one had told any of those incarcerated that such a thing was about to happen, they knew. They always knew.

  Blackstone reached the condemned cell, and tapped on the door. The spy-hole cover slid back, then the door itself creaked reluctantly open on its heavy hinges to admit him.

  There were three men in the cell — two warders and the condemned man. The prisoner, Jappee Sloane, had been sitting on his bed, but as Blackstone entered the cell he stood up.

  Alarm crossed the two warders’ faces. Then they relaxed.

  The condemned man was not seeking trouble, they realized. He wanted to do no more than look the policeman squarely in the eye.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” Sloane said.

  Blackstone shrugged. “Didn’t you, Jappee? Why ever not? You invited me, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I invited you, all right,” Sloane agreed. “But I still didn’t think you’d have the stomach for it.”

  “The stomach for it?” Blackstone repeated. “What can you mean by that?”

  “I just didn’t think you’d be brave enough to confront the man whose life you’re taking from him,” the prisoner explained.

  “If anybody’s responsible for what’s about to happen, it’s you yourself, Jappee,” Blackstone said evenly. “You’re the one who poisoned your mother for her pitiful savings.”

  “She was old. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway,” Sloane protested.

  “Then it’s a pity you couldn’t have waited.”

  “I never thought I’d be caught.”

  “You’d be surprised how many men have gone to the gallows thinking just that.”

  There was the sound of several fresh pairs of footsteps in the corridor — the priest, the governor, the warders who would lead Sloane to the gallows, and the hangman himself.

  “Don’t you feel no remorse about sending a young man like me to his death?” Sloane asked.

  “None at all,” Blackstone answered him.

  “I just wonder how you’ll sleep tonight,” Sloane said belligerently.

  “I’ll tell you,” Blackstone replied. “I shall sleep like a baby.”

  The footsteps were drawing ever closer. The execution party entered the cell, led by the governor.

  “Can Blackstone be there when I drop?” Sloane asked.

  The request seemed to trouble the governor and he thought about it for quite a while. “If that is both your wish and his, then Inspector Blackstone may be there,” he said finally.

  “But it’s not your wish, is it, Inspector?” Jappee Sloane asked tauntingly. “Visiting me in the condemned cell is one thing. But standing there and watching me drop? Well, that’s something else entirely. That’s something you haven’t got the stomach for!”

  Blackstone smiled. “You always did underestimate me, Jappee, lad,” he said. “To tell you the truth, underestimating me was one of the main reasons you got caught.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Sloane said, as he felt the one consolation he had left in the remaining few minutes of his life — the one thing he had been holding on to — crumble beneath him.

  “Don’t believe what?” Blackstone asked. “Don’t believe that’s why you got caught?”

  “Don’t believe you’ll come to the gallows with me.”

  Blackstone leant forward, so that his mouth was almost touching Sloane’s ear. “I’ll tell you what, Jappee,” he said softly. “If you think it’ll make me suffer to watch you die, why not make it even worse for me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why not ask if I can pull the pin that opens the trap-door? Because I’ll do it if they let me, Jappee! I’ll do it with pleasure!”

  *

  It was five minutes after eight when the prison door opened and Blackstone stepped out into the street. Jappee Sloane would still be hanging from the gibbet, he thought as he stopped to light a cigarette. He’d still be hanging there because, though he would he deeply unconscious — and would have been from the moment he dropped — he wouldn’t be medically dead for at least another fifteen minutes. That was the way that hanging worked.

  Some said the rope was barbaric, but Blackstone didn’t think so. He’d seen his own mother slowly die from overwork, when he’d been no more than a nipper, and there’d been nothing he could do about it. Jappee, on the other hand, had stood there and watched as his mother had writhed in an agony that he’d been the direct and only cause of. In Blackstone’s book, hanging had been a mild punishment for that.

  It was as he took his first drag on the cigarette that Blackstone noticed the carriage. It was parked a little way up the road. It wasn’t a truly splendid carriage, like those the aristocracy swanned around in, but it was affluent enough, and looked out of place in the shadow of this grim, forbidding prison.

  He walked towards it, more out of curiosity than because it was on his route. As he drew level, the carriage door opened, and a voice from its interior said, “Climb in, Inspector Blackstone.”

  Blackstone recognized the man who had invited him into this unaccustomed splendour. His name was Sir Roderick Todd. He’d been some kind of diplomat for most of his career, but for the previous six months he had been Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

  “You are probably wondering why I have arranged for us to meet in such clandestine circumstances, Mr Blackstone,” Sir Roderick said, after he’d bade the Inspector sit opposite him.

  “Yes, sir,” Blackstone replied dutifully, because he knew that was what was expected of him, and while he had no scruples about antagonizing the Scotland Yard top brass when it proved to be necessary for his investigation, he was not quite reckless enough to do it purely for his own pleasure.

  Sir Roderick tapped on the roof of the carriage with his cane, and the coachman urged the horses forward in a slow trot.

  “I have within my gift a case which most officers in the Yard would give their right arm for,” Sir Roderick said portentously, as the coach began to leave the prison behind. “And you, my dear Inspector, are the lucky blighter who will actually be given the assignment.”

  The word ‘blighter’ did not fall easily from his lips, Blackstone noted. Nor should it have done. It was not at home in this man’s natural vocabulary. Rather it was an effort on his part to speak the language of the lower ranks. Blackstone coughed slightly. “I am honoured, sir,” he said.

  “I rather thought you might be.”

  “But with the greatest possible respect, I feel I should point out that I already have six cases pending, and it would be very difficult — if not impossible — for me to handle any more.”

  The Assistant Commissioner frowned. When a man offers a dog a bone, his expression seemed to say, he has the right to expect that the dog will wag its tail, rather than st
ick its arse in his face.

  “So you consider yourself to be overworked, do you, Inspector?” he said coldly.

  “We’re all overworked, sir,” Blackstone replied.

  “And why is that?” the Assistant Commissioner asked, as if suspecting that the Inspector was guilty of levelling unreasonable criticism against those in charge of the Metropolitan Police Force. “Is it because there are not enough policemen available?”

  “No, sir,” Blackstone replied. “Not at all.”

  “Well, then?”

  “It’s because there are too many criminals.”

  Todd laughed, though he did not seem particularly amused. “You may well be right about that, Inspector,” he said. “But while all crime is a serious matter, some crimes are more serious than others. And this crime is just such a case. Shall I tell you about it?”

  “There’d really be no point, sir,” Blackstone said stubbornly. “As I’ve just told you, I’ve got my hands full at the moment.”

  “And yet you can find the time to travel to this grim place and witness an execution.”

  “That was different.”

  “In what way?”

  “I was challenged to come by the man who was due to die. I find it very hard to turn down that kind of challenge.”

  “Then this is just the case for you. A real challenge. Would you like to hear the details?”

  Blackstone suppressed a sigh. “If I must, sir,” he said, just as the coach ran over a set of uneven cobblestones and rattled loudly.

  “What was that you said?” the Assistant Commissioner demanded sharply, when the coach had stopped rocking.

  “I said, why don’t you give me the details, sir?” Blackstone lied.

  The AC nodded. “Very well. But before I go any further I must caution you that you will not discuss what I tell you with anyone else. And that includes that rather portly young man who is your assistant — Sergeant… Sergeant…?”

  “Sergeant Patterson, sir,” Blackstone supplied.

  “Just so. Sergeant Patterson,” the AC agreed.