Down These Strange Streets

lived in the house of her guardian, a man by the name of Rupert Harcourt.”

Although the even tenor of his voice did not change, when he pronounced this name, I shivered, and knew we had come to the heart of the matter.

“Her parents named this man as her guardian?” Jesperson enquired.

Mr. Randall shook his head. “They did not know him. He had no connection to the family at all. When Mr. Bellamy died, the infant Flora was all alone in the world. A total stranger, reading of her situation in a newspaper, was so struck with pity that he offered her a home.”

“You find that strange,” I said, remarking his tone.

His eyes, for all their languid soulfulness, could still deliver a piercing look. “It is surely unusual for an unmarried, childless man of thirty-plus to go out of his way to adopt an unwanted infant. In fact, he never did adopt Flora, but set up some sort of legal arrangement to last until she married, or reached the age of twenty-one—a date still eight months in the future.”

“She has money?”

“Very little. To give him credit, Harcourt never touched her small inheritance, yet she never lacked for anything; toys and sweetmeats, clothes and meals, books and music lessons were all paid for from his own pocket. The money from her father was left to gain interest. I suppose it may be near one thousand pounds.”

It sounded a lot to me, being used to managing on less than thirty pounds a year, but it was not the sort of fortune to inspire a devious double-murder plot.

“Has any attempt been made on your life?” Jesperson asked suddenly, and I saw Mr. Randall wince and raise his hand to his head before he replied, “Oh, no, hardly—no, not at all.”

Jesperson responded testily to this prevarication. “Oh, come now! Something happened to frighten your fiancée, whatever you may make of it. Don’t try to hide it.”

With a sigh, Randall lifted the lock of dark hair that half-hid his forehead and bowed his head to reveal a bruised gash, obviously quite recent, at the hairline.

He explained that a few days earlier he had been to dine with Flora and her guardian. After the meal, the two men had adjourned to Harcourt’s study, a large room at the front of the house, with cigars and brandy snifters, and there Randall had asked permission to wed Miss Bellamy.

“It was a formality, really, since she had agreed, but as the man was still her legal guardian, it seemed the right thing to do.”

“His response?”

“He said, rather roughly, that young ladies always made their own decisions, but he had no objections. Then he asked if I knew she’d been engaged once before. I said that I did, and he gave an unpleasant laugh and asked me if that hadn’t made me think twice. I didn’t know what he meant to imply, but it seemed meant to be offensive. Trying not to take offense, I told him that I loved Flora, and that since she had been good enough to accept me, nothing short of death would induce me to part from her. And it was at that dramatic moment that a book fell off a shelf high above my head.”

He winced. “It looked worse than it was—scalp wounds bleed profusely—but it was quite painful. I had never imagined a book as a lethal weapon.”

“Where was Harcourt when this occurred?”

“He was facing me, standing farther away from the bookshelves. Before you ask, I could see him clearly, and while I suppose he might have contrived it, I was not aware of him doing anything that could have triggered the fall. In any case, he seemed completely shocked, and almost as worried about his book as my head. I should probably say more. If he’d meant to harm me, I don’t think it would have been at any risk to any part of his collection.”

“He’s a book collector?”

“Nothing so benign,” he replied. “In fact, it was because of the collection that Flora rarely set foot inside that room. She found the morbid atmosphere more unpleasant than the scent of our cigars.”

“R. M. Harcourt, of Harrow,” Jesperson said.

“You know of him?”

“I had not made the connection until this moment. He has written of his collection—at least, certain recent acquisitions, in a journal to which I subscribe.”

Turning to me, Jesperson explained that Mr. Harcourt took a particular interest in murder, and had, over the years, managed to acquire a goodly number of weapons—knives, guns, and a variety of sharp or heavy instruments that had caused the loss of human life: a lady’s hat pin, a piece of brick, a Japanese sword, an ordinary-looking iron poker. In addition, he had amassed a library on the subject of the crime, as well as what might be described as mementos of murder, odds and ends that were connected in some way with any famous—or infamous—crime: hair from the heads of murderers or their victims, bloodstained clothing, photographs of crime scenes, incriminating letters. He possessed poison rings, flasks, phials, bottles, and even the very cup in which Mrs. Maybrick had mixed the arsenic powder with which she’d killed her husband.

“He’s very proud of it,” Randall said. “Occasionally, people call at the house to see the collection, or to offer new items they hope he’ll buy. I was polite, but, frankly, I will never understand the appeal of such gruesome objects.

“After the accident, Flora became hysterical, and made me promise I’d never enter that room again. Then she decided that was not enough, and that I must not return to the house. She also suggested that we not announce our engagement, and wait until she’s twenty-one to marry.”

“She suspects her guardian?” Jesperson asked quietly.

Mr. Randall hesitated, then shook his head. “She says she does not. But she feels I am in danger, through my attachment to her, and if she’s right about that, who else could it be?”

“Forgive me, but . . . are there no rejected suitors?”

“Flora told me she received but two marriage proposals in her life, and she’s never mentioned anyone, I’ve never heard of any other man, who might harbor such strong feelings for her,” he replied. “But, in any case, she is wrong. Adcocks’s murder, quite naturally, affected her nerves. She sees danger, an unknown assassin, lurking everywhere; an evil force behind every accident.” He paused to take a deep breath.

“Shortly after the injury in the study, I chanced to stumble over an object in the hall—and I might have fallen and struck my head a second time if Flora hadn’t been there to catch me. This was the same object that Adcocks had bruised his foot on, and this coincidence was too much. Her nerves are not strong. How can they be? She’s suffered so much, has lost everyone she has ever loved—that’s when she insisted I leave at once, and not come back. She imagined danger where there was none.”

“And yet, whether or not you are in danger, someone killed Mr. Adcocks,” Jesperson said with heavy emphasis.

“Precisely. And if you can solve that crime, I hope her fears may be put to rest.”

* * *

AFTER MR. RANDALL HAD DEPARTED, JESPERSON DASHED OFF A LETTER TO Mr. Harcourt.

“I think it best that Harcourt has no reason to connect us with his ward or her fiancé,” he told me. “Therefore, I shall present myself to him as a fellow aficionado of murder. And as he shows me his collection, it may be that, if he does know something of Adcocks’s death, he’ll give himself away.”

“Won’t he wonder how you’ve heard of it?”

“Not at all. It is quite well-known in certain circles.” He scarcely paused in his writing as he replied, stretching out his other hand and running it down the spines of a stack of journals on the desk beside him, as if he were one of those blind folk who read with their fingertips.

Abstracting one issue, he paused to flip through the pages until he found the one he wanted me to see.

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.”