The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl

by Theodora Goss

  “Do we really have to go out in this?” asked Catherine. She looked out the window with obvious distaste.

  “Only if we want to defeat Queen Tera and save the world,” said Mary.

  Catherine grimaced. “Can’t we save the world in good weather?”

  “The thing I’ve learned about adventures is they don’t come when you want them to,” said Mary. “They just sort of happen, like sneezing. Mrs. Davies is right—we could get lost in a fog like this, out on the cliffs. I hate to lose any time, but I think for the rest of the day we had better stay in Marazion and gather supplies. Not a single one of us has wellies—it’s just not the sort of thing one needs in London—and Beatrice and Diana will probably need mackintoshes. Diana never remembers to bring hers anywhere, and Beatrice has gone out so little in London that she doesn’t have one. I don’t know about Justine—she lived in Cornwall for almost a century. She may have prepared for the weather.”

  “Well, I didn’t bring waterproof anything,” said Catherine. “What? Don’t look at me like that. Pumas don’t wear mackintoshes! They’re smart enough to get under cover when it rains.”

  “I have money, but not a lot of money,” said Mary. “And keeping five of us at this inn is expensive, so I hope you brought everything else you needed! Come on, let’s tell Beatrice and Justine what we’re doing, and then find Diana.”

  Beatrice and Justine were perfectly happy to let Mary and Catherine go shop for waterproof boots and coats, although Beatrice insisted she did not really need them. “What a lovely rain!” she said, looking out the window. “I will go out in a little while and stand in the courtyard. It looks so refreshing, and will revive me from our long journey.”

  “I think the plant girl has gone insane,” Catherine whispered to Mary as they walked down the stairs again. Mary did not reply—each to their own, and she did not want to criticize Beatrice’s personal habits. But she could not imagine deliberately standing out in the rain. It did not sound refreshing at all to her!

  As they left the inn, Mary saw Diana in the yard in front of the stables, throwing a ball to a large black dog and talking to one of the ostlers, a boy not much older than she was.

  “So this is where you’ve been,” she said to her sister, feeling irritated, as she often did with Diana. “Next time, could you please let me know where you’re going?”

  “Nate says he’ll let me ride the pony once the weather has cleared up,” said Diana. “It’s a real Dartmoor pony, caught wild in the hills when it was just a foal.”

  The ostler, who must be Nate, tugged at his cap in their general direction.

  Mary surveyed her sister critically. “What have you been doing with yourself? You’re absolutely covered in mud.” And these were Diana’s good clothes, not the ones she wore when she was pretending to be one of the Baker Street boys! How in the world would Mary get them clean again?

  “Playing with Satan, of course,” said Diana. “What’s wrong with mud?”

  “It’s cold and wet and filthy,” said Catherine. “How can you stand the squish of it? Mud is the main problem with England. Well, and the cold rain. And the snow. And the fact that it’s surrounded by water.”

  “Do you mean the dog?” asked Mary. “You shouldn’t call a dog that, no matter what he looks like—it’s not kind.”

  “But it’s his name,” said Diana. “Isn’t it, Nate?”

  The ostler just nodded, apparently tongue-tied before all these women.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Mary. “We’re going to the store without you. I assume you left your mackintosh back in London?”

  “Of course,” said Diana, throwing the ball again. “Go get it, boy! Go fetch! Who wants to go to a stupid old store anyway? Let me know when you’re going someplace interesting.”

  “We’ll see you later then. Come on, Cat. We have shopping to do. And no, you can’t stay here—I can tell you want to crawl back into bed. But I need someone to help me carry parcels.”

  Mary could hear Catherine cursing under her breath as they walked out of the yard and past the King’s Arms, the public house next to the inn, to find the general store Mrs. Davies had mentioned.

  MARY: I checked in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It says pumas like to swim. Why are you such a coward about water?

  CATHERINE: Pumas like to swim. In calm, clear, cool water, preferably in tropical jungles. Where does it say they like to walk around in chilly, intermittent rain that never seems to end? Also, as you may have noticed, pumas have fur—a thick, luxurious pelt of it. Moreau deprived me of that. I like water when it’s not coming out of the sky, and when I know I’m not going to be shipwrecked in it.

  MRS. POOLE: That must account for your endless baths.

  By the time Mary and Catherine returned with the requisite number of wellies and mackintoshes, in what Mary hoped were approximately the right sizes, it was almost dark. The general store was completely out of waterproof hats, having sold all its stock in August. As they passed through the entry hall, Mary saw Diana sitting in a corner of the dining room with the ostler they had seen earlier and what seemed to be three of his friends, one of whom Mary recognized as the boots boy. She was cutting a pack of cards and dealing them to her companions. She must be gambling again. Oh, for goodness’ sake! Would she never learn to act like a young lady?

  DIANA: Why do you even continue to ask that question?

  MARY: Because I haven’t given up hope?

  DIANA: Then the more fool you.

  Should Mary try to stop her? Surely it was the duty of an older sister.…

  Just then, Mrs. Davies came up to her. “Miss Mulligan, I believe you wanted to see Kyllion Keep? Mrs. Polgarth, the daily woman, came in not half an hour ago. She’s sitting by the window in the dining room having a cup of tea, if you’d like to speak to her.”

  Mary turned to follow Mrs. Davies’ pointing finger. By the window sat an older woman, plump and comfortable-looking, in a knitted shawl and an old-fashioned straw bonnet.

  “Shall I introduce you to her? She can tell you if it’s possible to view the interior of the keep.”

  “Yes, please, Mrs. Davies.” What could the daily woman tell them? Mary was not certain, but any information was better than none. She tugged at Catherine to follow her and gave her a look that she hoped conveyed the message Let’s see what this Mrs. Polgarth has to tell us. Catherine gave her a look that seemed to reply, I’m cold and wet and tired of carrying these damn parcels.

  MARY: How can a look possibly convey all that?

  CATHERINE: Artistic license. Anyway, that’s certainly what I was thinking at the time!

  Mrs. Davies introduced them as two lady visitors eager to see the beauties of Cornwall. “Miss Mulligan and Miss Montgomery,” she said. “All the way from London.” Mrs. Polgarth nodded and said, “How do.” She did not seem particularly impressed.

  You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Mary reminded herself. How did Mrs. Poole do these things?

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Polgarth!” she said. “Do you really live in Kyllion Keep? The only remaining part of Kyllion Castle, built by Sir Allard Kyllion in the fifteenth century, and destroyed in the Civil War by Cromwell himself? I’ve read so much about it! About how Queen Elizabeth herself slept in the Red Bedroom and saw the ghost of Sir Allard carrying his severed head, and how Lady Eselda fell in love with the pirate Black Jack Rackham and sailed away with him on his pirate ship. Is there anything left of the poisonous garden grown by Gryffin Kyllion, whom everyone thought practiced the Black Arts?” Thank goodness the book from the Reading Room had been so thorough. “My friends and I were very much hoping we could visit the keep—but perhaps it isn’t open to visitors?”

  “Well, miss,” said Mrs. Polgarth, visibly thawing at this recitation of the glorious and bloody history of the keep, “it isn’t open to visitors at the moment. You see, Miss Trelawny herself arrived home Sunday evening, with a friend from London and her daughter, as we
ll as a distinguished foreign visitor, a lady from Egypt. She’s still in mourning—Miss Trelawny I mean. Her father, Professor Trelawny, was a famous Egyptologist, digging up all them mummies we hear about in the newspapers nowadays. I think it was a curse myself—they do say all those old tombs have curses on them, and whoever opens them is doomed. The professor died in a fire six months ago, along with his assistant, a low sort of fellow that I never liked, and Miss Trelawny’s fiancé. A handsome young lawyer, he was, and very much taken with her. Such a sad business. They say it was an accident, but that’s how curses work, ain’t it? So you see, I don’t like to disturb her at such a delicate time.”

  “Oh, I had no idea,” said Mary. “I’m so very sorry! What a terrible loss for Miss Trelawny—her father and fiancé gone, and at the same time. It’s like a novel, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is!” said Mrs. Polgarth, nodding vigorously, as though she too had read those sorts of novels—as she probably had. “To be honest, I thought you might be one of those lady reporters who write for the penny press. We had quite a few of them after the accident. Well, I wish I could show you the keep, seeing as you know so much of its history, but you see I can’t, not while Miss Trelawny and her guests are there. Though it would do the house good to have some young ladies in it! That little girl has no one to play with. I’m taking her a bag of sweeties—lemon and pear drops, peppermint sticks, anise humbugs, and something else.…” She looked into a small paper bag she had placed on the table, beside the teacup. “Oh yes, licorice. She’ll like those, won’t she? Children do like their sweeties. My Bert always did—he’s grown now, of course, and in the navy. Last I heard he was somewhere near Minorca.”

  “How old is this child?” asked Mary. “It’s a pity she can’t meet my sister, who is just fourteen.”

  “Oh, that is a pity!” said Mrs. Polgarth. “This little girl must be twelve or thirteen, although she’s a small ’un. Is your sister traveling with you?”

  “She’s upstairs, resting,” said Catherine.

  Mary looked at her gratefully. It would never do to have Mrs. Polgarth learn that her sister was in the other corner of the dining room, gambling with ostlers!

  “Well, I’m sorry we can’t visit the keep,” said Mary. “But perhaps we can climb about on the ruins of the castle and look for evidence of Gryffin Kyllion’s garden? It sounds like a wonderful place for a picnic.”

  “It is, indeed,” said Mrs. Polgarth. “And you can climb about on the ruins, of course. Miss Trelawny owns the keep itself, but not the ruins or grounds.”

  “Could you show it to us on a map?” asked Catherine. “We bought a map of Penzance and environs, all the way from Mousehole to Porthleven. We thought it might come in handy.” She looked about among the parcels and finally pulled out the map.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Polgarth affably. Catherine placed the map on the table and leaned over it, her elbows on the wooden tabletop.

  Was Catherine thinking what Mary was thinking? Distract Mrs. Polgarth! Well, whether she was thinking it or not, she was doing it very effectively. While Mrs. Polgarth pored over the map, pointing out the different landmarks, making comments such as “Here is the keep, and if you get to Perranuthnoe you’ve gone too far,” Mary reached over to the paper bag of sweets. Hannah and Greta, the pickpockets who worked for Irene Norton in Vienna, would have done this so much more easily and elegantly! But it would take only a moment—yes, in a moment, it was done.

  Ten minutes later, after they had bade Mrs. Polgarth good night and she had disappeared, her tea drunk, into the darkness, Catherine said, “So, what did you do? Send a message of some sort?”

  “I dropped my Athena Club seal into the paper bag,” said Mary. “I don’t know what Alice will make of it—after all, she doesn’t know Mina had the seals made for us. Beatrice was teaching her a little Latin, but I don’t think she ever got to Greek. Will she understand the letters or symbols on the seal? The owl, the olive branch… I don’t know. But there was no time to write a message, and I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “You did well, Miss Mulligan,” said Catherine. “Come on, let’s collect Diana before she gambles away our money. I want to check on Justine and make plans for tomorrow.”

  “From my experience,” said Mary, “Diana rarely loses, at least for long. I sometimes wonder if she cheats.”

  DIANA: I may lie and steal, but I never cheat at cards! That would not be honorable. Anyway, only idiots need to cheat.

  Beatrice and Justine were doing well, although Justine admitted that she felt weaker than she had expected from the journey. They had evidently been discussing European politics. Mary could not imagine how they found such a topic interesting! Catherine said she would sit up with them for a while, so Mary left her fellow Athenians to it and prepared for bed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

  She spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning, although the mattress was comfortable enough for a country inn. She was once again sharing a bed with Diana, who eventually came up from her card game and banged about the room without consideration for anyone else in it before collapsing into bed. Her feet were cold! And how could Mary have forgotten that Diana snored? Catherine, who came to bed even later, still retained some of her nocturnal habits and got up several times during the night to prowl around.

  Sometime before dawn, Mary finally fell into a deep sleep in which she walked through the labyrinthine streets of London, trying to find Sherlock Holmes, who had somehow, inexplicably but with the compelling logic of dreams, turned into an orangutan. She searched for him through the streets and alleyways of Soho, knowing only that she had to find him before Big Ben struck the hour. She did not know which hour, or how long she had to find him, but she walked through that endless maze, calling and calling, while her voice echoed forlornly down the lamplit streets.

  CHAPTER XIII

  A Causeway Across the Sea

  The next morning, Mary woke stiff and sore. It took her a moment to realize that Mrs. Poole would not be coming up to tell her it was time for breakfast or discuss the grocery bills. Where was she again? Not Vienna, not Budapest—no, a village in Cornwall. She had a terrible headache.

  Catherine was already up and gone. Diana was still asleep, her head under the blanket, feet sticking out. At least she was not snoring.

  Mary got up, put on her robe, and slipped out as quietly as she could—although, really, almost nothing woke Diana. She crossed the hall and knocked on the door of the room across from hers.

  “Come in,” called two voices—Catherine and Beatrice, she thought. When she opened the door, she was greeted by Catherine’s “Oh good, you’re up. We didn’t want to start the confabulation without you.”

  “Good morning to you too,” said Mary. “Bea, do you have anything for a headache? My head is throbbing.” All of them already seemed to be dressed. This was not like her—usually, she was one of the first up.

  “I have a willow bark powder,” said Beatrice. “You can take it with water, and it should help in about half an hour. But really I think you need some breakfast. That will help you more than one of my medications. You are worried, and therefore you are clenching your jaw. That is giving you a headache. You need to chew on something, such as a piece of toast.”

  “We were just talking about what to do today,” said Catherine. “The Queen makes her visit to St. Michael’s Mount tomorrow. I say we all go to Kyllion Keep and try to stop them there, before they can attempt to abduct her. There are five of us and three of them—assuming Alice is still on our side and will stay out of the action.”

  “Based on what Justine has told me,” said Beatrice, “I do not believe even the five of us are strong enough to prevail against Queen Tera. She is as powerful as Ayesha, perhaps more so—we did not see Ayesha use her power at such a distance, or turn seven men to ash. We cannot simply assault the keep. It would be foolish to do so. And Justine agrees with me.”

  “Justine?” said Mary. “Do you?�
� She wanted to hear, not just what Justine had to say, but how she sounded this morning. Had she recovered from Queen Tera’s attack? She did at least look better this morning, although still very tired.

  “Yes,” said Justine. “I know too well that we cannot stand up against Queen Tera. And I do not think we can take the keep by force. If I understand correctly, a keep is—”

  “The strongest part of a castle. The best fortified,” said Catherine. “Yes, I know my English, thank you. It’s Latin I have trouble with. All right, then—you’re the planner, Mary. Plan something.”

  Plan something! That’s easy for her to say, thought Mary, rubbing her temples. She wished her head did not hurt so badly. “We should at least go reconnoiter around the keep. Does it have any vulnerabilities? Justine’s right, we can’t simply walk in there demanding Alice and Mr. Holmes. Cat, you didn’t see Queen Tera at the British Museum. She just pointed at those lamps, and the flames in them leaped up, engulfing seven men in some sort of fire. It didn’t even look like normal fire—it moved like snakes, and it sparkled with all sorts of colors. And then you could just see them—Professor Moriarty and the others—burning up like pieces of paper, crumbling into ash.… It was the most frightening thing I have ever witnessed. And she blasted Justine from across the room. I assume she could do the same to us. Even if we got Alice and Mr. Holmes back, how would we stop her from kidnapping the Queen? We know, or at least we’re pretty sure, that she’s going to try to kidnap Her Majesty from St. Michael’s Mount tomorrow. We can’t let that happen.”

  Beatrice rummaged in a bag on the bedside table, took out a small packet wrapped in wax paper and a spoon that looked as though it were made of horn, measured some of the powder into a water glass, and added water from the matching bedside carafe. She handed the glass to Mary. “Drink this,” she said. “It will taste a little bitter, but it will help your headache.”