Anthony Horowitz - Moriarty

And so we set about our grim task—for it was as if we were exploring a catacomb. Each door opened upon another corpse. We started with the kitchen boy, Thomas, who had closed his eyes one last time in a bare, shabby room beside the scullery. The sight of him lying there, still dressed in the clothes he had worn to work, his bare feet resting on the sheet, clearly affected Jones, and I was reminded that he had a child who might only be a few years younger than this young victim. Thomas had been strangled. The rope was still around his neck. Half a dozen steps led down to a basement room where Clayton had lived and died. A carving knife, perhaps taken from the kitchen, had been plunged into his heart and remained there, almost seeming to pin him, like an insect in a laboratory, to the bed. With heavy hearts, we made our way up to the attic room where the cook—we now knew her name to be Mrs Winters—lay scowling in death as she had in life. She too had been strangled.

‘Why did they all have to die?’ I asked. ‘They may have worked for Lavelle but surely they were blameless.’

‘Their assailants could not risk any of them waking up,’ Jones muttered. ‘And with Lavelle dead, they would have had no reason to hold back what they knew. This way, they are prevented from speaking to us.’

‘The boy and the woman were strangled but Clayton was stabbed.’

‘He was the strongest of the three of them, and although he had been drugged, he would have been the most likely to wake up. The killers were taking no chances. With him, they used a knife.’

I turned away. I had already seen enough. ‘Where next?’ I asked.

‘The bedroom.’

The flame-haired woman whom Lavelle had addressed as ‘Hen’ lay sprawling on a goose-feather mattress, wearing a nightdress of pink cambric with ruffles around her neck and sleeves. Death seemed to have aged her ten years. Her left arm was flung out, reaching towards the man who had lain beside her, as if he could still bring her comfort.

‘She has been smothered,’ Jones said.

‘How can you tell?’

‘There are lipstick marks on the pillow. That was the murder weapon. And you can see also the bruising around the nose and mouth, where it was held in place.’

‘Dear God in Heaven,’ I muttered. I looked at the empty space where the bed covers had been thrown back. ‘And what of Lavelle?’

‘He is the reason for all this.’

We made a quick search of the bedroom but it revealed little. ‘Hen’ had a fondness for cheap jewellery and expensive dresses, the closets bursting with silk and taffeta. Her bathroom contained more perfumes and toiletries than the entire first floor of Lord & Taylor on Broadway—or so I remarked to Jones. But the truth was that both of us knew that we were only delaying the inevitable and, with a heavy heart, we made our way back downstairs.

Scotchy Lavelle sat waiting for us, a few police officers still lingering around him, wishing they could be anywhere but here. I watched as Jones examined the body, leaning forward on his stick, being careful to keep his distance. I remembered the anger and the hostility with which we had been greeted only the day before. ‘Want to nosey around, do you?’ Had Scotchy been more obliging, might he have escaped this fate?

‘He was carried here, half-conscious,’ Jones muttered. ‘There are many indications of what took place. First, the chair was moved and he was tied down.’

‘The ribbons!’

‘There is no other reason for them to be here. The killers must have brought them down from the bedroom for that express purpose. They tied Lavelle to the chair and then, having assured themselves that everything was as they wanted, they dashed water into his face to wake him up. It is hard to see with so much blood but I would have said the collar and sleeves of his nightshirt are damp and anyway we have, as evidence, the upturned vase which was brought in from the kitchen. I saw it there yesterday.’

‘And what then?’

‘Lavelle awakens. I have no doubt that he recognised his two assailants. Certainly the boy he must have met before.’ Jones stopped himself. ‘But I am wrong to describe it to you in this way. I am sure you have observed every detail for yourself.’

‘Observed, yes,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t have quite your facility for completing the picture, Inspector. Pray, continue.’

‘Very well. Lavelle is tied down and helpless. Although he may not know it, his entire household has been killed. And it is now that his own ordeal begins. The man and the boy require information. They begin to torture him.’

‘They nail his hands to the chair.’

‘They do more than that. I cannot bring myself to examine it too closely but I would say that they used the same hammer to break his knee. Look at the way the fabric of his nightshirt lies. They have also smashed the heel of his left foot.’

‘It is disgusting. It’s horrific. What was it, I wonder, that they wished to know?’

‘Matters relating to the organisation for which he worked.’

‘And did he talk?’

Jones considered. ‘It is almost impossible to tell but we must assume he did. Had he kept silent, his injuries would surely have been even more extensive.’

‘And still they killed him.’

‘I would imagine that death would have come as a relief.’ Jones sighed. ‘I have never encountered a crime like this in England. The Whitechapel Murders, which came straight to mind when I arrived, were barbaric and vile. But even they lacked the cruelty, the cold-blooded calculation that we have witnessed here.’

‘Where next?’

‘The study. That was where Lavelle greeted us and, if he had letters or documents of any interest, we will probably find them there.’

It was to that room that we returned. The curtains had been drawn back allowing some light from the front to come through but it still seemed dark and abandoned without its owner, as if it belonged to a house that had been deserted long ago. Only one day before, the desk and the chair had been the stage from which our lead actor had played his part. Now they were useless and the unread books seemed more irrelevant than ever. Still, we went through the drawers. We examined the shelves. Jones was quite certain that Scotchy Lavelle would have left something of value behind.

I could have told him otherwise. I knew that any organisation run by a man like Clarence Devereux would take no chances when it came to its own protection. There would be no letters lying conveniently in wastepaper baskets, no addresses scribbled carelessly on the backs of envelopes. This whole house had been designed specifically to guard its own secrets and to keep the world at bay. Lavelle had described himself as a company promoter but there was not a scrap of evidence in the room to support this. He was an invisible man with no background and no foreground, and plans, strategies and conspiracies he would have taken with him to the grave.

Athelney Jones was struggling to conceal his disappointment. All the papers we found were blank. There was a cheque book with no entries, a handful of receipts for trifling domestic matters, some letters of credit and promissory notes that seemed entirely respectable, an invitation to a party at the American legation ‘celebrating American and British business enterprise’. It was only when he was thumbing through Lavelle’s diary, turning one empty page after another, that he suddenly stopped and drew my attention to a single word and a figure, written in capital letters and encircled.

HORNER 13

‘What do you make of that?’ he demanded.

‘Horner?’ I considered. ‘Could it be referring to Perry? He was about thirteen.’

‘I think he was older.’ Jones reached into the back of the drawer and found something there. When he held out his hand, I saw that he was holding a bar of shaving soap, brand new, still wrapped in the paper. ‘It seems a strange place to keep such a thing,’ he remarked.