The Paternoster Club

Sebastian Gloom
Part Nine

The crime that Father Anthony had hoped would be lost amongst the mischief and mayhem of any major city was front page news the next day, and Sebastian Gloom sat up straight in his wheelchair as the headline caught his eye. “Quite a coincidence,” said Benson as he laid his master's breakfast on the table before him. “Two murders in that house in just a few days.”
“No coincidence,” said Gloom, his fingers white as he clutched the newspaper with furious intensity. “I would wager everything I own that the unfortunate servant girl was Doris Kettle. The church, tidying up loose ends.” He looked up at his manservant. “You spoke to her. How would you characterise her?”
“Quiet, scared, but basically innocent. Her only crime, I think, was to have had a villainous brother. Left to herself, I think her only desire would have been to live an honest life. Work for her living, meet and marry a good man, raise a couple of children. I was rather shocked to find that it was she who was the weasel in the house. I would say that she was more a victim than a villain.”
Gloom nodded. “This was murder, Benson. Murder most foul. I intend to bring the culprit to justice, whether it was the church or not.”
“I wonder if our clerical friend dirtied his own hands this time,” said Benson as he poured Gloom’s tea, “or whether they hired another man to do the job for them?”
“If it was Doris who met her end that night, the motive would have been to ensure her silence. They would have feared that Gideon had told her that it was the church that had hired him. They wouldn’t have taken the chance that she might have spoken to her assassin before her death, passing on the dangerous information to someone much better equipped, as well as more criminally inclined, to use it against them. No, if I'm right about the victim and the motive, this was something the church would only have entrusted to one of their own people. A priest, a member of Exercitus Dei. Maybe none other than Father Anthony himself.” He looked at his manservant over the top of the newspaper, his eyes narrow with anger. “Cold blooded murder, Benson. Committed by a man of the church. A man able to clear his conscience of any immoral act simply by asking forgiveness from God.”
“How do we find out?” asked the manservant. “If the police find out about our own involvement, we run the risk of becoming suspects ourselves.”
“Yes, we cannot let them find out that we were hired to recover the bottle. However, I was a friend of Philip Cranston, before his death. I can use that to explain my interest in the case.”
“So, we're going to pay a visit to Inspector Bailey?”
“Yes, we are.”

☆☆☆

Sebastian Gloom had collaborated with Inspector Bailey many times over the years, whenever a case came along that lay outside what the police normally felt comfortable dealing with. Gloom was happy to lend his expertise with the occult whenever necessary, and this had led to the two men becoming fast friends. Like Gloom, Bailey was a member of the Paternoster Club, and so Gloom decided to spend the evening there, in the hope that the inspector would pop in, allowing the investigator to begin a casual conversation during which he could steer the topic of discussion towards the crime of the night before.
The evening was a long time away, though, and the inspector, who had investigated the original break in and whose familiarity with the house and the family would surely result in his being given this new case, would need the day to do his own investigating. Gloom spent the day working on some of his other current cases, therefore, which mostly involved poring over information sent to him through the post and researching through the vast collection of occult books he had collected across the years. Gloom's handicap meant that he tried to avoid travelling whenever possible, and if he had to meet a client in person, they could often be persuaded to come to him.
He made no great breakthroughs in any of his cases that day. He hadn't really expected to. Romantic folklore to the contrary, investigation, even occult investigation, usually meant days or weeks of grindingly boring research, with only the occasional moment of exhilaration as a collection of seemingly unrelated facts finally came together in a way he hadn't noticed before. Gloom made headway in several of his cases, in that he eliminated several possibilities and narrowed areas of future research, but it would take several days more like this one before he came close to actually solving any of them.
Reading and taking several pages of notes was tiring, though, and Gloom took a nap in the middle of the afternoon, Benson helping him into a large, padded chair in the lounge in which be could sleep for a couple of hours, watched over by the heads of stuffed and mounted animals from all four corners of the world. While he slept, Benson busied himself with looking after the house with Alfred, the two men sweeping the carpets of what had been two of the museum's main display rooms. One of these rooms now served as the main dining room, for those occasions when Gloom entertained a large number of guests, while the other housed the investigator’s art collection. Gloom was fond of paintings above all, a form of art that he himself had dabbled in from time to time, although he was the first to admit that he had no real talent in that area. The room contained twenty of his current favourites, mounted on the walls, and as one or another went in or out of favour he would swap them with others that he kept stored in the basement.
At four o-clock he awoke for afternoon tea with cream scones that he ate in the kitchen with Benson, Albert, Doreen and Jake, who had just returned from school. He knew that it was considered unusual in modern day England for the head of the house to eat with the staff, but an unmarried man confined to a wheelchair was limited in the company he was able to enjoy and he fought a never-ending battle against loneliness. Fortunately, his retainers were good company. They had learned to be comfortable in his company and spoke their minds without fear of offending him, holding conversations that would be considered unthinkable between people of such different social classes in most other houses. Gloom told them about the cases he was working on (but not the affair with the Cranston household and the Catholic church) and they told him all the gossip they'd heard about working class life in the city, which Gloom absorbed with fascination.
Finally, it was time to head for the club. Benson helped him change into his evening suit and then stoked up the steam wheelchair. At five o-clock they set out into the streets of Manchester, bustling with people of all classes going home from a hard day's work, some of them tipping their hats at Gloom, others staring curiously at this eccentric gentleman who featured so prominently in the local folklore.
A small group of people caught Gloom's eye as they approached the first corner. They were sitting at an outdoor table in front of a small restaurant, apparently enjoying the last rays of the afternoon sun as they sipped their tea and munched biscuits, but Gloom noticed the way their eyes turned his way without quite looking directly at him. Watching him while trying to make it look as though they weren't. They spoke a few words to each other, and then one of them stood and walked in their direction. Again, he didn't look at Gloom and Benson. He watched the horse drawn carriages clattering along the street, nodded his head at the ladies and their gentlemen he passed and occasionally paused to look in a shop window. He gave every impression of merely enjoying a pleasant afternoon stroll through the streets of Manchester, but whenever Gloom looked in the small rear view mirror mounted on the arm of his chair the man was always there, twenty or thirty yards behind them. Gloom cursed under his breath. There was nothing in the world more ridiculously easy to follow than a steam driven wheelchair.
He said nothing to Benson, knowing that his manservant would immediately turn to look behind, alerting their tail that they knew he was following him. He knew immediately what this meant, and he felt an enormous anger and regret. He'd investigated many important and powerful men over the years, put more than a few in prison or sent them to the gallows, and a couple of them or their close relatives had made attempts on his life in retribution, but this was different. This kind of surveillance operation had the smell of a large and wealthy organisation behind it. It could only be the church. Somehow they'd found out that it was he who'd found and recovered the Solomon Bottle, and they now saw him as their best lead on Paul's organisation. The Resistance, as he thought of it. That meant he couldn’t join it after all. He couldn't learn any more about them when everything be knew could be taken from him. Either by the priesthood as he was kidnapped and tortured, as Gideon had been, or by God Himself when Gloom died and stood before Him for judgement.
He was more determined that ever to hold them to account for the murder of Doris Kettle, though, and so he kept on course for the club, hoping for a meeting with inspector Bailey. When they arrived at the elegant, cream coloured sandstone building, therefore, he allowed his manservant to help him into an indoor wheelchair, then sent him away for a few hours. “Come back for me at about ten,” he said, knowing he usually spent the time in The Marble Arch, the nearest pub. “Try not to get too sozzled. We don't want to be stopped by the police on the way home.”
He spent a moment of amusement at the dilemma he was posing for the man following them. Should he follow Benson, or wait outside the club in case the investigator emerged again? He guessed it was he the man had been told to follow, though, and he found himself hoping it would rain, hard, while he loitered in the street outside.
Inside, the doorman helped him through into the lounge, where he took his usual place at the table beneath the large portrait of the King that hung on the north wall. The opposite wall bore a huge crucifix with a morose looking, emaciated figure of Christ hanging on it. Seeing it there, Gloom mused once again that if Christ had been hung instead of crucified, there would be a noose hanging on the wall, as well as around the necks of devout Christians all around the world.
Two of his friends, Alexander Grand the business lawyer, currently working for the Imperial Airship Company, and Peter Mourne, an accountant for the Manchester Electric Company, were already at the table and greeted him warmly as he guided his wheelchair into a space between them. He beckoned for the smartly uniformed waiter to come over and ordered a drink from him.
“So, Gloom! Caught any ghosts recently?” asked Peter Mourne cheerfully. He turned to Alexander Grand. “I heard he had to deal with an unruly poltergeist in the C**k and Bull the other day. It was protesting and causing a ruckus because the barman wouldn't serve spirits!” He roared with laughter at his own joke, and Gloom and Grand chuckled along with him.
“Poltergeists are German spirits,” pointed out Gloom. “If one of them came over here causing trouble, the army would soon see him off. Perhaps our friend Cunningham would be called upon to deal with him.” At the next table, Captain Simon Cunningham of the Manchester Infantry Regiment, dressed in full uniform including medals, looked up from his newspaper at the mention of his name. He scowled at the sight of Gloom and returned to his reading. He had little patience with anyone not able to run twenty miles carrying a full kit bag, and had made no secret of his belief that Gloom was a waste of space who should have been mercifully put out of his misery when the polio took his legs. Gloom wasn't normally the type to make sniping comments, but that kind of attitude couldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged or he would lose the respect of the entire club.
Mourne laughed again, even more loudly than before. He was a big man and a loud man who filled any room he entered. He seemed a strange man to be an accountant, but Gloom had more than a suspicion that he did more for the electric company than just add numbers. There was a fair bit of conflict between the electric and the steam industries, and Gloom suspected that this occupied more of the man's working day than keeping the books. He knew for a fact that the most vocal of the ‘Electricity is the Work of the Devil’ agitators worked for the steam companies, and would have been astonished if the electricity company didn't have its own battle plans drawn up.
“I would like to see the good Captain chasing a spectre with that sword of his!” said the ‘accountant’, chuckling and making his huge belly wobble under his straining waistcoat. He was referring to the Captain’s fondness for his pistol sword which, Gloom saw, he was wearing now, the fourteen inch blade hanging from his belt, although the single shot pistol which formed an integral part of the weapon was hidden by the hem of his jacket. The Captain shook his newspaper to show his disdain for such comments and became intensely interested in the next article.
The waiter brought Gloom's drink, and he took a sip from it as he looked around the lounge, hoping for a glimpse of Inspector Bailey. He wasn't visible, but the club had a number of alcoves and annexes for people who wanted to have a more discrete conversation. The more likely reason was that the Inspector wasn't there yet, though, and it was quite possible that he wouldn't turn up at all that night. He took his work seriously, and wouldn’t indulge in an evening at the club while he had a hot lead to follow. Gloom knew that he might be spending quite a few evenings here, waiting for him. A trip to the police station to see him was out of the question. It had to seem to be a chance meeting if the inspector wasn't to suspect that he had a much closer connection to the case than he wanted to admit.
He chatted with his friends, therefore, swapping jokes and sharing news and gossip as he waited, and neither of his companions suspected that the investigator wanted anything more than a quiet evening in their company. After a couple of hours had passed they decided to move on to the dining room to have a meal, during which Gloom stared in admiration and astonishment at the sheer quantity of food that Mourne called for on his plate. The annual membership fee that they all paid included all the food and drinks they wanted, and the investigator thought that the club’s owners might well be regretting their decision to accept the accountant’s membership request.
Gloom himself had only a small meal, as always, and so finished well before either of the other two men. He stayed for another quarter of an hour, though, to be polite as the other two men tackled their suppers and then ordered a second course from the sweets menu. Gloom made his apologies and returned to the main lounge at this point, though, afraid that the Inspector might turn up and leave again without his seeing him.
There was still no sign of the inspector, so Gloom picked up a copy of the Times that another club member had abandoned and leafed through the pages. He turned to the crossword and completed it in half an hour, then composed a letter in his head that he felt obligated to write later that evening in reply to an idiotic editorial regarding what the reporter described as ‘rebellious and anarchic women’. Gloom didn't think that wanting the right to vote and stand for parliament made women rebellious and anarchic, but the main plank of the reporter’s argument was the Bible’s insistence that women were inferior to men, and no-one could argue against that without standing against the church itself.
He chatted with other club members on a variety of subjects that they felt was of overwhelming importance and Gloom did not but which he discussed with them nonetheless as if they were subjects that he himself had been wrestling with all his life. Boredom began to hang on him and he felt himself increasingly tempted to broach dangerous subjects just to liven up the evening, such as what role, if any, the native inhabitants of the other continents should have in governing their lands, or whether the death penalty was appropriate for acts of sexual deviancy. Fortunately, though, he was saved just half an hour before Benson was due to return for him when the inspector finally showed up.
“Gloom!” He exclaimed in delight upon seeing his wheelchair at the table closest to the room's entrance. “I saw that infernal contraption of yours in the lobby. Why don't you just buy a full sized steam carriage and use the streets like normal people?”
“Have you seen the price of charcoal?” replied Gloom with a smile as the inspector sat next to him. “It costs a fortune just to keep that little chair running, and that's despite half the country being covered with acacia plantations!”
“So poor Benson has to walk beside you because you're too much of a skinflint to buy a vehicle with two seats?”
“I would give everything I own to be able to walk beside him,” replied Gloom.
“Yes, of course. I'm sorry, old fellow. I wasn't...”
Gloom waved his apologies away. “I did experiment for a while with an electric wheelchair,” he said. “It would run on batteries charged by windmills positioned on the roof of my museum. Unfortunately, no-one has yet invented a battery capable of storing enough current for a journey of any useful length. Even if I used the most efficient battery that presently exists, it would require one the size of a Hansom cab to take me as far as the first street corner, and would take a week to recharge before I could use it again.”
“A breakthrough in electricity storage may be just around the corner,” replied the inspector with an encouraging smile. “I read just the other day that the electric company has great hopes for a lead acid battery with which you can carry electricity as easily as a bucket carries water. They hope that they might one day replace the copper cables that are currently being laid all across the city.”
“It had better come soon, or it will be too late for me to take advantage of it.”
“Nonsense, you'll outlive us all!”
“I'll certainly outlive you if you keep driving yourself so hard. You'll work yourself into the grave, my friend!
“My health is excellent! “I intend to go on catching crooks for a good many years yet.”
“Delighted to hear it! So, how fares the eternal battle against the criminal underworld?”
“Eternal is right,” sighed Bailey. “I swear that every time we catch a robber or a brigand, two more spring up to take his place. The bobbies on the beat have never been busier. I currently have no fewer than fourteen open murder cases on my hands! I have trouble remembering which suspect or witness belongs to which crime. I’m interviewing a witness and I say ‘When did you last see the Colonel alive?’ and they say ‘What Colonel?’ and that's when I remember that he's a witness to the murder of a barrister's wife!”
Gloom chuckled. “I sometimes have the same trouble with my cases. I was reading about a case this morning. The young woman in the Cranston house.”
“Yes, I was assigned that one.” Gloom's heart soared with joy. He’d been dreading that the case had been given to a man he didn't know, that he had no relationship with. “Nasty. The murderer chased the girl through half the house. He must have really wanted her dead!”
“Do you have any leads?”
“Apparently the girl stuck him with a carving knife before he killed her. We found a trail of blood leading away from the crime scene. It led to where we assume he had a carriage parked.” He frowned. “The killing blow was professional. One stab, straight to the heart. I've only seen that kind of work from a professional assassin, but the victim was a cook’s assistant, nobody at all. We normally wouldn't even think about investigating the killing of a girl like that.”
Gloom let the comment pass. “But this is the second killing in that house in just a few days.”
“Ah, so you know about that, do you? That wasn't mentioned in the papers.”
“I was a friend of Philip Cranston. When the first killing took place in his house, a mutual friend brought my attention to it.”
“And you decided to investigate the crime?” asked the inspector, leaning forward hopefully.
“I asked a few questions. It seems that the manservant interrupted a burglary. The item that was stolen was of special religious significance.”
Bailey frowned. “If the church is involved, that complicates things,” he said. “If they're investigating the crime as well, they may take it out of my hands.”
“I'm currently thinking that last night’s victim, Doris Kettle, was planted in the household by the thief to learn the location of the object.”
“I'm thinking the same thing, which means that the murderer was likely to be the very same man who planted her there. Killed her to stop her from revealing his identity.” Then he noticed the expression on Gloom's face. “You disagree?” he said.
“I believe that the thief was contracted to do the job by someone who needed his safecracking skills. I believe that it was this person who murdered Doris Kettle, in case the thief had told her who hired him.”
“And what reason do you have for believing this?”
“Because my contacts on the streets tell me that the thief was her brother Bartholomew Kettle, also known as Gideon. I don't have proof of that, but my friends are rarely wrong.”
“Gideon! Yes, he's known to us. If we'd known his real name we might have made the connection ourselves. What makes you think he didn't kill his own sister? He’s certainly capable of such a despicable act.”
“Because Gideon was not at liberty when Doris Kettle was murdered. He and his gang, two men whose names I have been unable to ascertain, were attacked in their hideout, number 836 Stephenson Road. Gideon’s men were killed, as were two of the attackers, and the surviving attacker took Gideon with him. Some disagreement over the price for turning over the item, I assume.”
“Your contacts on the streets again? They seem to know an awful lot about this case.” He examined Gloom's face carefully, but the investigator kept his face expressionless and the Inspector decided not to press the issue. “So that's what that was all about,” he said. “Quite a firefight, by all account. Four bodies on slabs, two of whom we couldn’t identify. One of the neighbours said there was another man present. That was your man, I assume?”
“Yes. Please don't ask me to reveal his identity.”
“I don't suppose you have any idea who these attackers were?”
“I have reason for believing that they were members of Exercitus Dei, the church's ‘problem solving’ agency.”
The inspector stared at him. “Why would you think that?” He leaned forward, a warning gleam in his eye. “Is there's something else you’d like to tell me?”
“Only whispers. I keep my ear to the ground and I hear things. One name that was mentioned was Father Anthony, the priest who runs the church on Market Street.”
“I can’t bring a man of the church in for questioning without more than that.”
“I know. Were the servants able to give a description of the attacker?”
“The cook said it was a huge, ferocious looking man with wild black hair and wild, blazing eyes. The footman was a little more helpful. Average height, dark hair, about thirty.”
“That description fits Father Anthony.”
“As well as half the men in Manchester. We can't put a man of the church in an identity parade.”
“I know, but it might be interesting to see if he’s suffered a recent knife wound.”
The inspector allowed his eyes to lose focus as he thought for a few moments. “The Cranstons mentioned another inspector who called on their house recently. We have no record of any of our people calling on them that day. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that, would you?”
“I'm afraid not. Possibly it was a man of the church, come to see how much they knew.”
The expression on Bailey's face told Gloom what he thought of that theory. The investigator thought for a moment that the inspector might challenge him on it, but then he looked away, at the crucifix hanging on the wall. He stared at it for a moment, then turned his attention back to Gloom. “Well, this is all very interesting, but it's not really anything more than your opinion. You haven't one shred of proof to connect any of this with Father Anthony, or with the church at all.”
“But now that you have someone to focus your attention on, you might uncover some proof.”
“How sure are you that Father Anthony is involved? How sure really?”
“There is no doubt in my mind. I know for a fact that he is a member of Exercitus Dei, and that all members of that agency have special licence from Rome to commit any crime, any sin. The acts are wiped from the Books of their Lives as if they never happened.”
“But that doesn’t mean that he has actually carried out any such acts.”
“True, I suppose. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that he is responsible. Call it my nose for a guilty man.”
“If only your nose was admissible in a court of law.”
The two men smiled. “Will you, as a favour to me, keep me informed of any developments in the case?” asked Gloom.
“If you inform me of any further ‘whispers’ you might hear on the street.”
“You have my word, my friend.” Gloom saw the waiter coming in their direction and guessed that he was coming to tell him that Benson had come to collect him. “It's getting late,” he told the inspector. “I should be getting along home.”
Inspector Bailey nodded. “Good health to you, Sebastian.” He said as Gloom pushed his wheelchair away from the table.
“And to you, Percy.”


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