Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

  I had imagined, though, that Daniel was fond of the children he doctored. He asked our cook to boil the bones and other remnants of our meals into soup for them, and several of his little charges came nearly every day to eat in the scullery. I’d often helped him pack a basket of fresh fruit and jars of boiled beef for the poor and sick when he left for his rounds in the East End. He’d paid Will for running errands and Hattie for carrying coal and emptying chamber pots. Why would he have done that if he didn’t care about their fate?

  In the end, my head awhirl and my heart aching, I drank the laudanum preparation Bess had left beside my bed and sank into a deadened sleep.

  ELEVEN

  Islept extremely late, and when I came downstairs I saw my cousin Archibald Mavety in our front hall. Beadall was helping him on with his coat.

  “Archie!” I called. I felt rather floaty and light. Quite peaceful and agreeable, and Archie was ravishing in his sky-blue jacket and striped trousers. “P-please, won’t you stay for b-breakfast?”

  He snorted. “You’ve missed it.”

  “Tea, then.” My knee bumped the umbrella stand and I watched it wobble and fall.

  “My, but the ladies of Hastings House are groggy this morning. Please tell me the good doctor hasn’t got you up on the dope as well as your sister?” His tone was light, but he looked genuinely worried as we embraced.

  I kissed his cheek and asked Beadall to have refreshments brought into the parlour.

  We took our seats in the sunlit room, and a moment later Mrs. Nussey came with the tea. Beadall, behind her, carried an enormous arrangement of flowers in a crystal vase. “Arrived this morning from Mr. Thornfax,” he said.

  Archie gave a low whistle. I stared at the profusion of ruffled purple tulips, the blue hyacinths, the white hothouse lilies. The heavy scent filled the parlour, and my stomach turned as I remembered the decadence of the opera box. “Bring them up to Mrs. Dewhurst,” I told Beadall. “Tell her he s-sent them for her.”

  The moment we were alone Archie lifted his freckled hands as if waiting for the heavens to fill them. “What the devil happened last night, Leo? I have the outline of it from the police, but I should like to hear your eyewitness account.”

  I told him. As he listened he took out his little book and marked down several notes. He seemed especially to like the part about Mr. Thornfax and the usher carrying Christabel to safety. I left out Tom Rampling’s late-night visit to my room, of course, and the fact that young Will had almost certainly been killed in the blast.

  But still Archie said, “I wonder which poor orphan was murdered this time.”

  “What d-do you mean?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ever read my newspaper column? This is the fourth explosion in half as many months. The Black Glove is clever. They know there is no one harder to find or predict than a street child. No one is less likely to be enquired about, afterward.”

  Servants are not family, and these foundlings are not even proper servants. The memory of Daniel’s words punched through the pleasantness I’d felt upon waking. “And they found one? A s-street child?”

  “Yes, I had it straight from the chief inspector this morning: a boy in rags counted among the dead. The police understand ’tis the details make the story, you see.”

  The light, floaty feeling drained away entirely, leaving behind a fogginess that was one beat away from nausea. “Have … have they identified the d-dead?” I asked him.

  “Not officially. Not yet.” Archie looked at me sidelong. “Why?” Then his eyes widened and he lunged forward in his chair to give my knees a little shake. “Did you see someone go down in the blast? It wasn’t a parliamentarian, was it?”

  I blinked; I had still been thinking of Will. “The Lord Ros-b-bury,” I said.

  Archie snapped his fingers. “I’ve heard only rumours so far. So it’s true?”

  “He was there, y-yes.”

  “Good God.” Archie leapt up and walked to the window. The sun lit his fine blond hair into a blinding halo. “Oh, this will make a roaring good story, Leo! Now I only need the note, and my triumph is complete.”

  “What n-note?”

  “There always has to be a note. It’s only a question of timing the thing properly so that I can get a lead story about the explosion and another, separate piece about the Black Glove’s note. The timing is paramount with these things, you know. The timing and the details.”

  He was pacing a tight circuit on the rug now, and the movement made me queasy. I leaned back against the cushions. Dizziness tilted the room before my eyes, and I struggled to cut through the laudanum’s lingering fog.

  “You do know Thornfax inherits his title?” Archie said, and sprawled into his chair again. “There’s a whole story just in itself! The wastrel son returns from the East to seek his father’s blessing.” He clapped a hand to his breast. “But alas! ’Tis too late!”

  I frowned. “What are you t-talking about?”

  “Rosbury, you idiot.” Archie grinned. “Your splendid suitor is now a lord.”

  “Mr. Mavety!” Daniel stood, red-faced, in the parlour door. “What in the devil’s name are you doing still here?”

  “I’m just leaving now, Doctor,” Archie said, and made a face at me as Daniel put a hand on his collar and fairly yanked him from his chair.

  When he was gone my brother-in-law rounded on me: “Did you say anything to him?”

  “I t-told him the Lord Rosbury was in the g-gallery.”

  “I forbid you to speak with that man again.”

  “Archie is my cousin,” I reminded him.

  “He’s a newspaperman! He has more concern for his career than for his family. Make no mistake, Leonora, he doesn’t care for your good name, either. Scandal and hearsay—that is what he lives for.”

  Archie’s sheer glee in the face of what had happened did seem rather insensitive. He seemed to reckon the catastrophe in words and sentences instead of lives lost. What was more, he seemed to know a great deal about the Black Glove. He knew so much that he could predict—could even brag about—the timing of the gang’s letter claiming responsibility for the explosion. But then, I considered, Daniel was hiding something, too. If his anger at Archie pointed to anything, it was not the doctor’s loyalty to his family but his reluctance to face facts.

  A few days later the Lady Hastings called Mr. Thornfax and me to luncheon in Gordon Square. She wanted to offer her condolences as well as to congratulate him on his summons to Parliament, now that he was to assume his father’s title and become the next Lord Rosbury. I suspected she also wanted confirmation of what I’d hinted at in the letter I’d hastily posted after the opera to reassure her of my safety: that a genuine mutual regard was developing between Mr. Thornfax and me. My aunt Emma knew me so well that she would be able to read my feelings on my face.

  Bess accompanied me from Hastings House in Mr. Thornfax’s carriage that Wednesday, but we dropped her for a visit with her brother, who worked as a steward in a home near Gordon Square. Mr. Thornfax used our few minutes alone to apologize for sending Christabel and me home so abruptly after the opera house violence and for not calling on us in the days that followed.

  “N-not at all. Your p-poor father—” I tried to say.

  “There was business to attend to, of course. The police, my father’s household affairs, the notices to send. It’s taken everything in my power just to ensure they’ll release the body in time for the funeral on Saturday—” He caught himself, pressing his fingers to his forehead. “Forgive me, Miss Somerville. I don’t mean to be so revolting about things.”

  “Not at all,” I repeated.

  “It isn’t the funeral arrangements that I’ve found so exhausting, to tell you the truth,” he said, and he leaned forward in the carriage to face me. “It is no secret to you, I’m sure, that my father and I were never great friends.”

  Forthright as always. I nodded uncertainly.

  “’Tis a case of what the public ne
eds to see, you understand.”

  “And w-what is that?”

  “Grief, of course. Or the manful suppression of it.” Mr. Thornfax sighed. “And, you know, I do feel sadness. I did not expect to feel anything, but the sadness is there. ’Tis not quite the right kind of sadness, though.”

  He looked so desolate just then that I reached out and touched his hand. “Why isn’t it the right k-kind?”

  Mr. Thornfax caught my hand in his and traced a finger across my palm. “Well, ’tis hardly manful. I feel like … well, I feel rather like a little boy again. Left all alone in the world.”

  “Like you f-felt when your m-mother died,” I guessed.

  “Yes.” His blue eyes shot to mine.

  I knew how it went. It had happened to me less than two years before. ’Twas Father who had died then, but I had found myself mourning Mother all over again. And I was only five years old when I lost her.

  Mr. Thornfax tilted his head in invitation, and I leaned forward to bring my face to his. Very slowly, very softly, he brushed his cheek against mine. “We are both alone in the world, are we not, Leonora,” he whispered.

  “Y-yes. Only I am not lonely j-just now,” I whispered back.

  I felt his smile as a kiss against my cheek. After a moment he sat back, slipped his hand from mine, and cleared his throat. “With your aunt, at least, I think we needn’t pretend to be grieving. She was quite vocal about my father’s short-comings, last time we met.”

  And indeed I saw no pretense of grief between my aunt and Mr. Thornfax during our visit. As we pulled up in the carriage her butler was there waiting with an umbrella to shelter us from the steady drizzle. The sounds of the piano-forte filled the foyer as we doffed our coats and hats. When we were announced Aunt Emmaline rose from the piano bench and clasped our hands in greeting.

  Until my father died I had never noticed how much his looks resembled those of his older sister. But every time I saw Aunt Emma after a short absence, I saw him in her: the long nose, the strong jaw, the kindly crinkles around the eyes. My aunt’s keen brown eyes, though, were all her own. They regarded one straight-on, friendly but always appraising. I remembered a long-ago visitor to Kew remarking that to be seen by the Lady Hastings felt rather like being seen through.

  Today she wore purple silk with a rust-orange striped overskirt. She and Mr. Thornfax exchanged pleasantries while I looked round at the familiar furnishings. It was odd to be greeted as a formal guest here. In the old days, whenever Aunt Emma had business in town, she would bring me with her from her country home in Kew to Gordon Square in London. In the old days, upon entering this room, I would have simply joined my aunt at the piano where she would plunk out a music-hall tune. She would sing to me in her rough contralto, and afterward we would dress for dinner in the most ridiculous of her Paris furs. Or she would read to me from Mr. Carroll and coax me to stumble through the parts of the White Rabbit, Alice, and the twins, while she played her favourite role: the Queen of Hearts.

  Aunt Emma said how relieved she was that we hadn’t been injured in the opera house disaster—nine souls dead, and thrice that number injured, she had read in the papers— and how dreadful for all London to be going round in a muddle of terror wondering when next the Black Glove would attack. She said how much she would miss Lord Rosbury, and then told us that the “dear old man” had disapproved most vehemently of her taking this house after the death of the Earl of Hastings.

  “What was his complaint?” Mr. Thornfax said, adding, “Not that my father ever needed much grounds to launch a complaint.”

  “Oh, ’tis sited too close to the boarding halls of University College for his liking. He thought I should stay on in Hastings House and remarry as soon as I could. ‘A lady in your position can’t be too careful,’ he was fond of reminding me.”

  “‘Be careful,’” Mr. Thornfax echoed. “The very anthem of my childhood!”

  My aunt gave a sympathetic nod. Then she rose and fetched a thick, slightly moth-eaten orange shawl from the back of a chair. This she wrapped snugly round my shoulders.

  Mr. Thornfax had stood with her, clutching his teacup to stop it rattling in the saucer, and he smiled at me as he settled back in his seat. “The colour suits you, Miss Somerville, but I think perhaps in silk?”

  I smiled back. Aunt Emma knew how much I loved this old shawl. By giving it to me she was acknowledging the awkwardness of this meeting for me, and thereby lessening that awkwardness considerably.

  Now she laughed. “Look at my niece basking in your attention, Mr. Thornfax. Like the princess with her golden ball.”

  Mr. Thornfax cocked his head. “Wouldn’t that make me the loathsome frog?”

  “Ah, but a frog is a little dragon, you know. If one goes back far enough in legend, all the pond-dwellers are dragons.”

  Mr. Thornfax laughed, too. “You flatter me, my lady.” He put down his teacup and picked up a little statuette of Harlequin. My aunt had been given it in her theatre days as thanks for one of her performances. She packed Harlequin in her case whenever she moved between Kew and town; he was her talisman, she said. I used to be allowed to play with him on the rug with my dolls. I felt an odd kind of jealousy, watching the man toy with him so casually.

  Mr. Thornfax seemed very comfortable with my aunt. They spoke of his writ of summons to the House of Lords, and of Mr. Thornfax’s plans for an endowment to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in his father’s name.

  “Charles Thornfax wasn’t one to gaze at the stars,” my aunt remarked.

  “No,” agreed Mr. Thornfax, “but he was a great admirer of efficiency. I plan to promote the Greenwich Meridian, you see. Adopting a global standard for time will bring shipping and trade into better alignment. Not to mention the railways.”

  Aunt Emma seemed impressed. “A politician already,” she said.

  Luncheon was laid, and we moved to the dining room. I’d never properly dined with Mr. Thornfax before—Christa had kept me from the table when he’d come to visit Daniel at Hastings House—and I was struck by the effortless elegance of his table manners. Waving aside her servants, he held the countess’s chair for her and served her wine from the crystal decanter. He offered us the choicest portions of the roast chicken and cabbage; he murmured his compliments to the cook the moment he’d tasted his meal.

  Aunt Emma waited until we’d moved on to our custard and strawberries. Then she said, “I hear that Archibald Mavety is no longer welcome at Hastings House. Can you enlighten me in this matter, Mr. Thornfax?”

  Mr. Thornfax touched his napkin to his mouth. “I believe he offended Dr. Dewhurst quite badly.”

  My aunt gave a delicate snort. “Daniel can be such a prig.”

  I stifled a smile to see that Mr. Thornfax looked slightly shocked.

  “That man—that newspaper—has always been friendly to the Hastingses,” she persisted. “What could Dr. Dewhurst possibly be worried about?”

  “Friendship is one thing, Lady Hastings. Family is another. Especially when slander is in play.”

  “Slander?”

  “The man is in such hot pursuit of the so-called Black Glove that he’d rather like to see the plot link up with the doctor’s pharmaceutical efforts somehow,” Mr. Thornfax said.

  The countess drew herself up and smoothed her silver hair. She had a way of stacking herself like so many sacks of grain upon a chair. “Surely not! I could never believe such a thing of Daniel, could you?”

  “I think ’tis likelier that young Mr. Mavety has invented the entire fiction, opium gang and all, to sell his newspapers.”

  “The Black Glove—a fiction? But then tell me, who is bombing our city?”

  “There are many in London who stand to lose money if opium is banned. Any street-corner chemist can put together a good lightshow from the stuff on his shelves. And he might do it if he thinks it’ll scare people into letting him keep mixing his laudanum for a farthing an ounce.” Mr. Thornfax shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised if th
ere were a dozen Black Gloves across the city by now.”

  “But Archibald wouldn’t deliberately falsify a story.”

  Mr. Thornfax raised his palms and smiled. “I am sorry. I know you are fond of the lad. And truthfully, I don’t know all the details of his quarrel with Dr. Dewhurst.”

  Aunt Emma had been watching me from the corner of her eye and must have seen from my fidgeting that I knew something. When our visit was concluded and we were waiting for our coats, she begged Mr. Thornfax for a moment alone with her niece.

  “Well? What did Archibald say to you?” she demanded when she’d closed the parlour door behind me.

  “I d-don’t—” I began, but she waved a hand to silence me. “Do let’s hear it in his words; it’s been too long since you did your cousin’s voice.”

  Before I could object Mimic leapt in, evidently delighted at the invitation. I parroted Archie’s comments about the orphans’ deaths and his speculations about when the Black Glove’s letter would arrive.

  “But what does it mean? What has it to do with your brother-in-law?”

  I shook my head.

  She sighed. “Well, you mustn’t worry yourself about it all. I am sure the opera house explosion was a terrible shock to you, my dear. But I believe you are in good hands with Francis Thornfax. I looked into his business affairs on your behalf, of course. He’s just sold all but his smallest and newest ship, so he must mean what he says about supporting the ban on opium, even if importing the stuff is what secured him his fortune.”

  I sighed. “He is p-perfect.”

  Aunt Emma laughed. “Of course he is perfect. He shall be a lord!”

  On our way home Mr. Thornfax wondered whether we might detour to the Embankment. “Since the weather has cleared I’d like to show you my new ship. We needn’t even leave the carriage, if you prefer.”

  I sensed this was important to him. “M-might we go a-b-board?” I said, and he grinned, pleased, but shook his head. “We haven’t a chaperone, Miss Somerville.”