She shook her head.
Toby, that paragon of trackers (according to The Sign of the Four), came over and sniffed the Duquessa without showing the slightest hint of recognition.
“Are you weak?” I asked the lady. “Starved?”
“No, not at all!” Her lovely eyes widened, quite earnest. “The paupers share their bread with me. The poorest of the poor, in rags, have pity on me.”
Just the same, I produced one of the strengthening sugar candies I always carry with me and placed it into her mouth, as Sherlock crouched at her other side, and Mycroft. Of Mrs. Culhane, I saw nothing more. Apparently, she had wisely retreated.
“But I want to go home,” Lady Blanchefleur said quite simply, her words rendered pitiful only by her circumstances. “Will you take me home?”
“We have come here for that purpose,” said Sherlock. “May I assist you to sit up, my lady?”
“Oh, no. No, I cannot sit up, nor can I stand, not by myself.” She seemed a trifle breathless, as if shocked, as if sitting up or standing by herself would be indecent. “Unless someone could possibly fetch me . . .”
Her words trailed away, and one could hear the blushing embarrassment in them. Averting her eyes from my brothers, she gazed at me imploringly.
“What?” asked Mycroft with far less than his usual gruffness. “What on Earth is it that you need?”
Wincing away from his question, she whispered to me, “I tried to crawl . . . but even that was . . . impossible. My waist . . .”
And I remembered the diabolical corset I had seen hanging in Mrs. Culhane’s shop.
Blanchefleur had worn such a corset, her ladies had told me, since childhood.
Indeed, I looked down upon a woman with the waist of a six-year-old. Never before had I actually seen the proof, but Mum had read to me from her Dress Reform journals of such—such mutilation—
“Ye gods with bunions!” I exploded, suddenly furious, although not at the unfortunate lady. I glared across her supine, shorn, and deformed body at my brothers. “I am sure she was sent to the very best boarding schools, Mycroft!”
“What on Earth—”
“Her poor waist, compressed to the extent that her personage has . . .” I could not remember the word atrophied, and this made me even angrier. “All her strength given up to fashion, so that now she cannot sit, stand, or walk unless she is encased in one of those infernal devices of torture!”
Lady Blanchefleur began silently but with eloquence to weep.
I have never seen Mycroft look so bewildered, but Sherlock, because he had at one time been subjected to quite a lecture by Florence Nightingale, did understand. Indeed, as one might expect, Sherlock took charge. “Hush, Enola. You’ve said enough. Might we borrow your cloak?”
Biting my lip to silence my anger, I stood up, took off the much-besmirched cloak, and handed it to him.
“Now, Your Grace, we shall carry you. Mycroft, lift her shoulders, please. There, you see, I told you our undertaking tonight would require two strong men.”
Actually, once he had the Duquessa wrapped in my cloak for modesty, Sherlock carried her easily by himself, she was such a frail thing, her weight so slight. He turned westward, towards the City. But after we had tramped through the slums for quite a distance without seeing a cab—indeed it would have been difficult to find one anywhere in London, as the hour was perhaps four in the morning—he turned to Mycroft and said, almost as if they were two boys again playing a game, “Your turn. Here.”
He handed the lady over to Mycroft, and to Mycroft’s credit, he bore the burden gently and steadily.
Still we saw no cab nor any sign of any form of transportation. Certainly the East End streets were not deserted, not in summertime, but the drunkards and other denizens, sneak thieves and round-the-corner Sallys, stayed far from us: two grim aristocratic men carrying what appeared to be a lifeless body as I trailed along, quite a sight I am sure in my muddy yellow dress with my face, hands, and hair in a mess, carrying a carpet-bag and leading a spotted spaniel by a leash.
Mycroft eventually handed Duquessa Blanchfleur back to Sherlock, and so we continued for miles, as they took turns carrying her.
During this entire protracted ordeal, both of my brothers remained almost completely silent, and Sherlock, in the lead as usual, seemed to have forgotten that I existed. But Mycroft walked next to me, and I felt him stealing frequent glances at me.
At last he spoke. “Enola. When, earlier this evening, Sherlock told me that all would become plain, was he speaking of you?”
Actually, I had no idea why Sherlock had insisted on bringing Mycroft along. Therefore I had no answer for Mycroft’s question. But as Mycroft seriously awaited my reply, sudden irrepressible laughter burst from me. “Indeed,” I cried, “considering the condition of my hair, my face, and my personage right now, seldom has a woman been plainer.”
I heard Sherlock chuckle. But Mycroft gazed at me, more solemn than ever, and in that moment, to my astonishment, I felt that I rather liked him.
“Exactly,” he said. “Last summer I met a rather spoilt yet neglected stick of a girl, or so it seemed to me. Yet now I see quite an extraordinary woman. All is not plain, not at all, for you are still but fourteen years of age.”
“Fifteen,” I replied pensively, “in a few days.” I had been thinking of my approaching birthday anniversary with no great joy.
Already owlish, Mycroft’s eyes widened yet more. “Really?”
“Truly?” exclaimed Sherlock at the same time. “Has it been a year already?”
“Almost a year since Mum ran off with the Gypsies? Yes.”
Saying it made me remember the message from Mum that I carried, still unread, over my heart, and I felt a familiar ache. Somewhat intensified, under the circumstances.
“I still cannot believe our mother would—” Mycroft began, for apparently Sherlock had discussed Gypsies with him.
But Sherlock silenced him. “I coerced you into accompanying us tonight, Mycroft,” he told his older brother quietly, “so that you would come to know Enola better, see her in action, and perhaps derive some insight from the experience.” Meaningfully, he halted, turned to Mycroft, and handed over to him the helpless and apparently fainting Duquessa Blanchefleur. “Have you?”
“This is an exceedingly inconvenient time for conversation,” Mycroft growled.
“Quite,” agreed Sherlock placidly as Mycroft trudged forward with his burden and we walked beside him. “At your earliest convenience, then?”
Mycroft said something rather naughty, although justifiable under the circumstances, which I shall not repeat.
Silently we slogged onward.
CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH
DAWN BLEACHED THE SKY BEHIND THE CHIMNEY-POTS by the time we finally reached Aldgate Pump, one of London’s huge hygienic monstrosities, unofficial marker that we were passing out of the unwashed East End and into the City proper. At the adjacent cab-stand, a few yawning drivers had arrived, and Sherlock was able to secure a four-wheeler.
As he laid Duquessa Blanchefleur gently upon one of the seats, she stirred and opened her eyes. “It is as I have always thought,” she murmured. “At their hearts, people are truly kind. Thank you.”
“You deserve all kindness,” I told her as I gave her another candy.
Nor did Sherlock disabuse her by reminding her of the “kindness” of Mrs. Culhane or Squeaky. Instead, he turned to me. “Enola, might I ask you how you came to be involved in this affair?”
“Of course you may ask,” I told him, and although we were all very weary from the night’s labours, I hoped my smile expressed my fondness for him. “But I decline to answer.”
He raised his eyes heavenward briefly before he spoke again. “Let me rephrase. You are known to Duque Luis del Campo and his household?”
“I am known to them as a concerned gentlewoman.”
“Then I think it would be less distressing to the household if you and you alone were to see
Duquessa Blanchefleur home.”
“Leaving masculine eyes out of the matter, you mean.”
“Exactly. Wait a minute.” Taking Toby’s leash from me and handing it to Mycroft, he strode to Aldgate Pump, produced a handkerchief (not edged with lace—his was the large masculine item), sopped it with water, came back to me, and began scrubbing my face as if I were a child.
Exceedingly fatigued, and also caught off guard, I stood like a department-store dummy for a few minutes before I reacted, pushing him away and taking the handkerchief to finish the job myself, washing mud and muck off my face and hands.
“Not too bad,” Sherlock said doubtfully once I had put on my wig and my hat to cover my dreadful hair. “Do you need your birthmark?”
“No.”
“Until we meet again, then.”
“Yes. Once this errand is done, I quite intend to sleep until tomorrow.”
I tossed my carpet-bag into the cab. But as I placed my foot on the step to follow it, Mycroft spoke for the first time. “Wait!”
Poor Mycroft, I had almost forgotten he was there. With hasty compunction I turned to him.
All of his usual pomposity and loquacity had vanished during the rigours of the night. He spoke with gruff but almost childlike simplicity. “When shall we see you?”
So warm was the unexpected surge of affection I felt for him that I had to remind myself that he had made no promises and I could not trust him. After a moment I replied, “I don’t know. I will be in touch. I promise.”
“Kindly notice that I have not summoned a constable to take you in hand,” he replied with some return of his usual testiness.
“I have noticed, believe me,” I told him earnestly.
“Such being the case, why can we not agree—”
“I am quite exhausted, Mycroft, unable to reason. I dare not agree to anything.”
Suddenly Sherlock spoke up with incoherence most unusual for him. “Enola. Your birthday!”
I turned to him in genuine bewilderment. “My birthday? What of it?” Neither of them had ever concerned himself with my birthday.
And both of them seemed to have lost all of their usual eloquence. As if he were having trouble completing a thought, Sherlock said, “We should be together.”
“What for?”
“All three of us,” Mycroft said just as labouriously.
Not to celebrate, certainly, the day that our mother had run away. “I cannot imagine either of you offering me cake or gifts. Why . . .”
But I let the question incomplete, partly because it would have been cruel to make them say any more, partly because I myself could not at that time face my own befuddled emotions, and also because—odd, for a logician’s daughter—I remembered what the Gypsy woman had said to me: that I was fated to be forever alone—unless I chose to defy the fate.
Together. All three of us.
Or safely alone?
The decision was mine.
“Enola?” asked Mycroft.
Far too tired to think it through, I trusted the impulse of my heart: I nodded. “Baker Street? Sherlock?”
“Baker Street by all means, at tea-time. Bring the skytales.”
That simply it was decided: The three of us would meet again on—not so much my birthday as the anniversary of Mum’s disappearance. All three of us trying to decipher what had become of her.
A bitter thought. But I said only, “Very well,” and waved, and stepped into the cab to take Duquessa Blanchefleur home to Oakley Street.
I pillowed her exceedingly dirty and pitifully cropped head in my lap whilst holding her hand. A few times during the journey she opened her eyes, but only to give me her angelic smile and close them again.
When we reached the Duque’s Moorish mansion, it was still very early, with only intermittent sleepy traffic on the street and pavements. Nevertheless, I knocked for the cabbie to descend, then told him to pull around to the back of the del Campo residence, like a delivery van. Fewer eyes would see there, and I felt sure that Duque Luis del Campo would prefer (as I did, for different reasons) that details of Blanchefleur’s whereabouts whilst absent from her family should be kept out of the newspapers.
As we stopped by the kitchen door, a cook ran out, scolding, then screamed like a guinea hen when I opened the cab and she saw the scene within.
“Fetch your master,” I told her, “and Mary—” Heavens, I could not think of their names, only Mary of Magdala, of Bethany, of Nazareth, of flowers, none of which would do. “Send down Duquessa Blanchefleur’s ladies-in-waiting, and hurry. And be quiet about it,” I added futilely as she scuttled off squealing like a shoat.
The Duque appeared first. In days to follow I drew many amusing sketches of that noble gentleman, his black hair all in polliwogs, rushing out in his nightgown with his bony ankles and bare feet protruding beneath the hem; true to his hot-blooded nature he had not paused even to put on slippers or a dressing-gown. Then came—Mary in chenille and Mary in flannel; I still could not remember Hambledon or Thoroughcrumb or which was which, nor did it matter. They shrieked and wept. The Duque, to his everlasting credit in my mind, verily kissed his wife again and again upon her thoroughly besmirched face.
However, it did seem to me that more practical steps were in order. Paying the cabbie, I suggested to the Duque that he should take his wife inside, and he gathered her up and did so, bellowing at the cook to summon the doctor, whilst the two Marys and I trailed after him. He placed her, muck and all, on a fainting-sofa in the parlour—never before had I seen that item of furniture used for its stated purpose. Whilst the Marys ran for smelling-salts, hot water, and Heaven knew what else, the Duque flung himself about the room in operatic paroxysms of joy at his wife’s recovery, wrath at the perpetrators of her disappearance and her pitiful state, prayerful gratitude, impatience for the doctor to arrive, indeed every possible reaction, only occasionally and incidentally including demands for explanations.
So eventually, as the Marys took over and the physician hurried in, I was able to excuse myself, having given only the most vague of accounts implying that Dr. Ragostin had located the lady, but in his masculine delicacy he preferred not to be credited in any way or mentioned in the affair. Duque Luis himself seemed overtaken by similar delicacy, although his might have been more of the societal variety; he asked me nothing of what I had seen or where Blanchefleur had been, and I felt sure that when he contacted Scotland Yard he would report only that his wife had been found and refuse any further cooperation. A headline would appear in the newspapers hailing the return of the Duquessa, but the text that followed would consist mostly of creative speculation. Sherlock Holmes, like Dr. Ragostin, would receive no credit in the affair.
Nor would my brother wish for any recognition, I thought as a different cab, innocent of mud, drove me away. In Dr. Watson’s accounts of the great detective’s adventures, Sherlock Holmes often declined to be mentioned in the solution of a case. Surely neither he nor Mycroft desired plaudits in this one.
Sherlock. Mycroft. I had brothers.
How odd it felt, how old-fashioned, how—comfortable.
I did not bother stopping my cab at the wrong place, ducking through Underground stations, any of my usual precautions in case I had been followed by either of the aforementioned brothers. I was simply too tired to bother. Also, to my muted surprise, I realised that, should they find out where I lived, I no longer cared. In short, I had the cabbie take me directly to the Professional Women’s Club.
Once there, I staggered in by the side door so as not to make a mess of the receiving-room’s carpeting, heaved myself upstairs to my room, ordered a bath and some buttered toast, partook of both, sent down my laundry, and, at about the time most folk were commencing their day’s work, I collapsed into bed for, I blush not to say it myself, a very well-earned nap.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH
SLEEPING DURING THE DAY TENDS TO INDUCE CONFUSION. I awoke that afternoon feeling quite young and wretched, sure that I�
�d slept right through my birthday and therefore received no worthwhile presents, on top of which Mum had gone missing, I had hunted for her through the woods of Ferndell in the rain, and now my knickerbockers were wet but I needed to meet my brothers at the train station—my brothers! No wonder I felt so frantic. I had never met them. I wanted them to find my mother, but also I did very much want them to like me. I must not wear knickerbockers, my hair dreadfully needed washing, all my white frocks had grass stains on them, and what if I couldn’t make it to the train station in time on my bicycle—
Bicycle?
Absurd. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in a year. I had abandoned mine in a copse of trees on a hill overlooking the country town of Belvidere during my own flight to London.
Sitting up, recognising my room in the Professional Women’s Club, realising that my birthday was not until tomorrow but I must indeed meet my brothers, in a sense for the first time, wearing a nice frock—then I saw that I had left a brown impression on my pillowcase. My hair did dreadfully need washing.
How peculiar, the parallels between last year and this. As I got out of bed to ring the bell for service, I still felt befuddled, as if I had slept late and missed seeing my mother depart, I must find her, notify the constabulary in Kineford village, I must at once take my bicycle—
Bicycle.
There it was again. Something tapping me on the shoulder.
Mum had taken quite a bit of trouble to teach me to ride a bicycle, now that I thought about it, and that was extraordinary, for Mum had not generally troubled herself much about me. “You will do very well on your own, Enola” had been her usual daily dismissal.
Hmm.
Evidently the ability to ride a bicycle had been important to Mum, Suffragist and reformer that she was. Indeed, standing on a cold floor barefoot in my nightgown and recalling various conversations, I realised that a bicycle was a symbol of sorts for Mum’s beliefs: A bicycle offered freedom of movement to females whilst defiantly flaunting the fact that they were, indeed, bipeds, just like those who wore trousers.
The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye Page 9
