AHMM, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Little Flora's eyes settled on me for a moment, and I was grateful Peter Quint insisted on some mud-colored greasepaint on my cheeks. She looked away, self-possessed. Alongside her stood Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, an otherwise sensible creature who would sometimes set out poppyseed cakes for what she called the wee fairies. I worked my way behind Flora's governess, Eloise, and my former employer.

  I hadn't seen Edward Delavan in a year, and he was certainly one of the best reasons to stay on the Terra side of the permabrane, if you like the type. Tall, cleanshaven, angular nose, broad shoulders, golden brown eyes with slashes for eyebrows that seemed to question anything inert. Although he was a man who always looked as though he was wondering where he had left his horse, he was a solicitor by education and an art collector by life's work. When he engaged me for Miles and Flora, he told me he was frequently away, and for long periods of time, in pursuit of new acquisitions, so the children were truly my responsibility. Today he wore mourning, expensively tailored.

  With a spade Peter Quint had found me, I jabbed at the earth. Eloise, resplendent in pea green bombazine, was speaking in a low tone to her employer. It was that intimate tone a woman uses with an uninterested man when she wishes him to believe there is something between them, even though he would be hard pressed to say what that was. “I know you'll want to be spending more time at Bly now."

  "Oh, will I?” Edward Delavan was watching the undertakers’ men settle the coffin with a few tugs.

  "Your presence—your guidance—is imperative, don't you see?” Eloise Dalrymple was breathless with purpose. Aside from the eyes bulging with romantic yearning, she had a heart-shaped face and interesting hair—dark curls pushed sideways off a wide forehead. “You are needed here, like holy rainfall. Bly is your home, Flora and I your family—"

  As I stood wondering just what he could be making of this arrant rubbish, he turned suddenly to look at me, and I ducked my head, snuffling, as he reached for my spade and chucked a couple of clods of earth over his nephew's coffin.

  "—name of Christ Our Lord, Amen,” the vicar bleated.

  Eloise moved closer to Edward Delavan. “You don't know what I've done to bring you back—"

  "Done?"

  She shrank a little, giving it some thought. “The letters, the prayers—"

  He looked at her carefully, noticing the sideswept curls. “Letters and prayers,” he said. “I see."

  Her hand shot out and touched the fine material of his black topcoat. “And more."

  * * * *

  Edgar was adamant. I watched him turn over the shards of the broken Limoges teacup pulled from the game bag Quint had filled at the scene of Miles's death. The teacup, the mechanical toy, a small needlepoint canvas, complete with needle, other oddments. If I believed Eloise Dalrymple had engineered the sudden death of the boy in order to force the absent uncle's hand, then I needed proof, said Edgar. Proof of intent. Proof of a pattern of behavior. Proof. I decided to start with whatever Edward Delavan might have in his files on her. That meant Harley Street, and that meant skirts and the only silk parasol I could tolerate.

  When Harley Street felt more familiar to me than I could account for, I remembered I had interviewed there with Edward Delavan. But it was a particularly strong impression and I wondered whether I had come away from that interview—like the redoubtable Eloise—just a little bit smitten, although it's the sort of thing you think you would remember. The fashionable Harley Street, with its blocks of stately Georgian facades, was professional home to three dozen physicians, so it had its share of bustle.

  I waited in the shadow of an elaborate pilaster across the street, repositioning my parasol less for the sun than the human eye. Then, at eleven, like gentlemen everywhere, Delavan emerged and headed for his club—Argracu, he had told me that time, Ars Gratis Cupido. Art for the sake of Desire. In a dove grey frock coat, he took off at a brisk pace, taking in the street as though someone somewhere was damned well hiding his horse.

  When he turned the corner to Cavendish Square and the foot traffic had momentarily cleared, I permeated the house through the black laquered door and stood listening in the entrance hall. Distant voices, servants trading stories, blares of coarse laughter. On a plinth in the center of the beautifully tiled hall was a crude figure of a stone coyote that looked more like a bench in Regents Park. I peeked into the room on the right, discovered it to be Delavan's study, and slipped inside in a way that reminded me of my Terra days, soundlessly closing the door behind me.

  If you were a fanciful person, standing in Edward Delavan's study you could believe you had been chloroformed, bagged, and shipped to a remote mountain village in Peru, where inscrutable homunculi now took turns guarding you. On the brass plate at the foot of one sizeable piece was the information that the figure in front of you was not actually a water fountain but rather a warrior from pre-Colombian Brazil. Most of the pieces had apparently been Delavan's own direct acquisitions, and I wondered whether membership in Argracu Club depended on that kind of personal adventure. No simple armchair collector with a healthy bank account would do.

  Delavan's files were nestled between his wall-length bookcase and the front windows draped in aquamarine velvet. Chancing the bottom drawer, I took out a folder marked “Bly Personnel,” somewhat miffed to find nothing on me. Dead, quit, or let go—off you go to the incinerator. And then there was Eloise Dalrymple. His advert, cut from the Times, her letter of application, two references, and a sheet of Delavan's comments. Eloise's letter of application rhapsodized over conducting all her dear sweet little ones in the children's choir at Papa's church in Long Piddle—which seemed to be the sum of her experience with young people.

  One reference, a village physician, commented on her general good health, although he alluded obliquely to nervous “spells.” The other reference was supplied by the village librarian who could only comment on Eloise's taste for the work of Mrs. Radcliffe, which on at least one occasion led to the poor girl's “fit” in the general reading room. Otherwise, perfectly normal if somewhat unexceptional. Neither of the references mentioned anything like a pattern of behavior, which in the case of Eloise Dalrymple and my proof, would mean past experience terrifying children to death. I would have to look elsewhere even if it meant a visit to Long Piddle.

  In his interview notes, Edward Delavan made three comments. “Hysteria?” was one, and “Rather intense,” was the other. “Can start immediately,” was the third.

  * * * *

  It was dusk outside the long narrow windows at Ectopolis Enquiries, where Edgar, Peter Quint, and I were sharing notes. Edgar—commenting briefly on my one-year anniversary at Ectopolis Enquiries—had just lighted the gas lamps. “Still no sign of Miles?"

  "No."

  The office tabby cat, Demeter, appeared on his desk and sauntered over to the teapot, enquiringly. Edgar's fingers played a scale through her short fur, and she ducked her head at his arm. There was a rap at the office door, and one of the other agents handed Edgar a report. “I was struck by the puncture wound in the palm of the boy's hand, Charlotte, so I had everything analyzed that Quint brought back from Bly.” Ecto Labs was easily thirty years ahead of anything found on the other side of the permabrane.

  Edgar eyed the report. “Broken teacup, residue of pekoe tea. Swatch of needlework, traces of dry human skin and soda crackers."

  "What about the needle?” Quint was carefully troweling lemon curd across a scone.

  "Needle—residue of alcohol."

  "That's it? No blood?"

  "Alcohol. Miss Dalrymple must have cleaned it and then been interrupted before she could begin work."

  Edgar sat up slowly, but the change was too much for Demeter, who jumped off. “Then there's the jack-in-the-box toy,” he said quietly. Edgar's eyes widened and a small smile pushed his mustache higher. “Traces of blood—” he said, laying the report on his desk, “—and curare."

  Curare.

  A plant-derived poison leading to paralys
is and death by asphyxiation.

  Edgar set the jack-in-the-box on his desk, then slowly turned the crank. The scratchy, slightly flat tune tumbled out. All around the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel. At the first “pop” the hatch flew open and the jack sprang up. It was an ambiguous figure with a devilish expression, in black and white harlequin cloth and a metal tricorn hat. Holding the figure by its sides, Edgar slowly pressed it downwards, as a spindle that surely wasn't installed at the toy factory rose through a crudely cut hole at the top of the tricorn hat. Tin snips was all it would take to modify the jack-in-the-box.

  Edgar opened his penknife and made two slices in the harlequin outfit, and we looked inside. The spindle had been soldered onto the metal base of the jack, Edgar told us, then curare applied heavily all around the tip. He closed the top, turned the crank, and went quickly to shove the head down. With a forceful palm of the hand, the way a boy might. Stopping just short of impaling his hand on the spindle. Then we all sat back from the deadly toy and stared. “Curare can only kill if it's injected,” Edgar said, sounding infinitely tired.

  Miles had been poisoned.

  * * * *

  That night I sat by the low fire in my rooms over Ectopolis Enquiries, cold April rain pelting my window. Edgar reminded me of the non-intervention clause in Eutopian crime fighting: No matter how corporeal we make ourselves, we cannot bring evidence of guilt to a Terra law enforcement agency. They must learn to mount their own cases, Edgar insisted, otherwise how will their sense of justice—and their application of justice—evolve? Our job is to arrive at the truth behind suspicious deaths and get people through the permabrane into Eutopia.

  Some get by us. There are those that just go cold. There are those that spontaneously resolve before we even know there's anything to investigate, usually in cases of extreme denial of the circumstances. Then there are those who know more about the whole matter than we do and refuse to come all the way through to Eutopia until we earn our keep and solve the mystery of their deaths.

  Peter Quint was returning the items from Bly.

  Then Edgar presented me with a sealed box containing the clothes I was wearing at the time of the fatal carriage accident—the customary presentation on the one-year anniversary of arrival in Eutopia. Some Eutopians incinerated them unopened; some opened them and handled the poignant mementoes; others—either practical or needy—washed, dried, ironed, and wore them.

  By late the next morning I unsealed the box, seeing with a small shock the rich brown velvet dress, the honey-coloured reticule, the soft leather hightops—all restored to a state of store-bought newness, before blood and tissue and mud marred them. Tucked into the folds of the dress was a slim portfolio of correspondence I could not recollect, but where the final damage on the Terra side of the permabrane is great, not everything is always recoverable.

  My heart pounded as I undid the clasp and slid the few papers into my hand. One was a letter from the headmaster at Miles's school, dated January, requesting a medical report on Miles, purely routine, overlooked at time of admission. Several weeks ago, the headmaster chastised, I sent a letter requesting same to Mister Edward Delavan, but understand he is presently out of the country. Since a physician's report is essential to our records on our boys, I trust you will send it at your earliest convenience.

  The next letter was from Sir Stephen Latimer, Solicitor, confirming my appointment for the twenty-seventh of February at his offices on Devonshire Place. “I shall look forward to seeing you again,” he wrote. Apparently I had consulted with this solicitor once already. In the honey-coloured reticule I discovered two pounds sixpence, a return train ticket to Bly, a handkerchief, a small book of verse by Baudelaire, and a datebook.

  On the twelfth of February I had written, Go to Harley Street, check E.D.'s files for physician's report on Miles. A week later was the first appointment with Sir Stephen Latimer. The second appointment was the final item in the datebook. No appointments went forward. Nothing beyond the twenty-seventh of February. What had I been doing until April tenth, when I arrived through the permabrane? Was my life, aside from Miles and Flora, so pathetically unencumbered? So blank? So—

  The datebook slipped from my hand. I suddenly understood with startling clarity that no appointments continued beyond February because . . . I didn't. No matter when I had arrived in Eutopia, I had died back in February, on the twenty-seventh. And I had been stuck in the permabrane for six weeks. Charlotte, my girl, I told myself with a strangely cool head, you died a suspicious death.

  * * * *

  At the entrance to Ectopolis Enquiries, I ran into Peter Quint, who carried an armful of nondescript clothes and a bucket filled with rags, and told me we had to get ourselves quickly to the Argracu Club, where he had just followed Eloise Dalrymple. While I changed into the charwoman's costume he had brought, Quint described how he had been replacing the objects from the Bly drawing room when he overheard Dalrymple telling Mrs. Grose she was meeting Edward Delavan at his club. I slung the bucket over my arm, Quint held my good clothes for a quick change afterwards, and raising our arms in two graceful curves out in front of us, we penetrated the permabrane.

  "Here she comes,” he whispered, pointing to Eloise Dalrymple, flouncing along the street, dressed in a raspberry taffeta dress. Quint would wait for me in the mews behind the Gothic red stone Argracu Club, which I then carefully permeated, finding myself in what appeared to be a cloakroom. I hobbled across the entrance hall, and chose a dark corner. From the billiard room just next to me came the snap of the balls, and braying laughter.

  I went down on my hands and knees just as two well-dressed muttonchopped gentlemen passed, describing Delavan's upcoming expedition to Amazonia—three times as costly as his last, one confided, but he says he's financing the trip by selling some country property he no longer needs.

  At that moment, the knocker resounded and a footman appeared. Eloise managed to look both demure and imperious, insisting, from what I could tell, that she see Mister Edward Delavan on urgent personal business. The footman held up a hand to her, telling her to wait there, and came so close to me that I was sure he would notice there wasn't a drop of water in the pail over which I was wringing my perfectly dry rags.

  Edward Delavan appeared, looking quizzical. Seeing her quarry, she dipped, she heaved, she thrust a bundle at the poor man, telling him she felt sure he would want a few of Miles's playthings as mementoes of the poor dear boy. He opened the bundle while she gabbled on about how fulfilling he'll find life at Bly, then he asked about a pea shooter he had given the boy for his seventh birthday. Dalrymple said she only chose the things Miles had played with most recently, although she was sure the pea shooter must still be in Miles's room and she could certainly lay her hands on it—somehow she made it sound naughty—if he would like.

  And the jack-in-the box, Dalrymple said, the one with the embossed silver Punchinellos all around the sides . . . Yes? Delavan inquired. She slumped and said how sad, how very sad, but Master Miles had been playing with it just minutes before he . . . collapsed. Then she bit her lip into shreds, until Delavan couldn't stand it anymore, and he finally asked where it now was. Well, she said, her spidery fingers molesting her black sideswept curls into place, that's the most extraordinary thing. It's vanished.

  Vanished?

  Along with my needlework, and a teacup. But about the jack-in-the-box, Mister Edward, Miles was ever so grateful when you sent it.

  * * * *

  When I confided these new developments to Quint, he commented, “Well, isn't that another turn of the screw,” and headed back through the permabrane to report to Edgar. I had changed back into the rich brown velvet dress I had been wearing on my last day as a Terran, and now walked the eight blocks to the offices of Sir Stephen Latimer, Solicitor, distancing myself as quickly as possible from the man who had poisoned Miles Delavan—but, why? I could see no possible motive. A ten-year-old boy could hold few secrets—all right, none he would even know
were secrets—and pose no threat. The wind picked up, tossing my skirts, but even without it the world felt jagged, all things sharp and dislocated.

  A manservant let me into Latimer's waiting room, where there were a couple of charming watercolors by the new French sensation, Manet. When finally the solicitor came out, I saw a tall man with cheerful features, wayward black and grey hair, and pince-nez clouded by fingerprints. After a few moments, Sir Stephen Latimer recognized me—"Miss Jessup!"—he declared. I corrected him, he recalled my visit a year ago, and together we sat.

  I apologized for missing my second appointment.

  "I just assumed you had worked out your problem."

  "My problem?"

  "About the will."

  "The will?” And Latimer proceeded to remind me I had come to him for advice about a friend's will, in which the estate was entailed through the male line. A minor inherits, and should he die without a male heir, the paternal uncle inherits. And should that person die without a male heir, the entire estate reverts to the sister of the original minor heir. There are few times on either side of the permabrane when things are quite so startlingly clear. Bly was not the property of Edward Delavan: It belonged to Miles. But how could the boy not know that?

  Latimer rang for tea, remarking how efficient it had been on my friend's part to declare the uncle the executor of the will. And then I understood how Miles had not known anything of his inheritance from the parents who had died in India. And I myself had discovered the truth only on the twelfth of February when I had been admitted into Edward Delavan's study while he was out of the country—bagging homunculi, wrapping up arrow poison—to rifle through his files looking for the physician's report on Miles. No doubt after mulling over what I had found, I arranged to meet with Latimer a second time to learn how to bring the crime to light.