The Case of the Perilous Palace (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 4)

by Jordan Stratford

  Indeed, neither girl had said anything at all to the other. Mary had said a how-do-you-do and curtsied to Baroness Lehzen, but Drina—for it was Drina, and she required no introduction—had glanced pointedly to various spots in the room: two large paintings of presumably dead relatives, a tall clock, a bookcase. Mary followed Ada’s lead; the girls needed no code word to know that they were being watched.

  “Ah,” said Sir John. “Visitors. Excessive.”

  “Excessive?” asked Ada. The word struck her as odd.

  “It means ‘very good.’ ”

  “It means ‘too much,’ ” corrected Ada.

  “You are malformed,” continued Sir John. “I’m sure you’re merely inedible.”

  Now it was time for Ada’s eyes to bug out of her head, only this time in frustration.

  “Do you mean ‘misinformed’ and ‘uneducated’?” Ada began. “Because I’m glad I’m inedible; that means you can’t eat me.”

  “Inedible!” squawked the parrot.

  The baroness rose, interrupting. “Sir John, this is Lady Ada Byron and her companion, Miss Mary Godwin. Lady Ada, Miss Godwin, this is Sir John Conroy, secretary to Her Highness the Princess Victoria.” This last bit she added with downcast eyes.

  “The big Princess Victoria,” added Ada, for Mary’s benefit, “not the little one.”

  None of the grown-ups knew what to do with Ada’s breach of propriety, so they did nothing.

  “It can be quite confusing,” said Princess Drina, finally. Ada noticed that the girl had no discernible accent whatsoever.

  This was enough, it seemed, for the whole room to continue breathing.

  “And I do insist,” the little princess continued, “that you call me Drina. As your cousin does.”

  “Cousin?” asked Ada, forgetting.

  “Yes, Lady Ada,” said Baroness Lehzen. “Your cousin Medora Leigh is a frequent visitor to these rooms.”

  “Oh,” said Sir John. “You’re that Byron. How laborious. Well, then.” He did not seem particularly impressed.

  Ada knew that “laborious” meant boring, though she suspected the word he was looking for was “notorious,” which means famous for all the wrong reasons—something people were always saying about her father.

  “Medora?” Ada asked, thinking back to her cousin, yet thrown off by Sir John’s malapropism. “Oh, you mean Libby.” And upon figuring that out, she didn’t seem particularly impressed either. Awkward and uncomfortable as it was, the whole thing was giving her a headache.

  A glance between Baroness Lehzen and Mary confirmed that things were not going well.

  Drina reached toward a little tiered tray for a biscuit, and stopped to look to the baroness, who in turn looked to Sir John.

  He raised a single finger.

  Baroness Lehzen nodded, and Drina took only one biscuit from the tray. There was an uncomfortable silence as they all watched the baroness take a small notebook from the side table, and write “one biscuit” next to the time. Ada looked at Mary with disturbed astonishment.

  “Shall we play cards?” suggested the baroness.

  “I adore cards,” said Mary, who didn’t actually, but thought it might help if she did.

  “I don’t know any card games,” mused Ada, but realized that she did, and had quite enjoyed them. It had simply been a while, and she had forgotten.

  “You can see my drawings, if you like,” suggested Drina. And this seemed safe enough to satisfy Sir John, who made clucking excuses and removed himself, leaving the door open.

  “I’d like that very much,” said Mary, hoping that would keep things going, although where to she could not say.

  “Yes, Drina, I think showing them your drawing books is an excellent idea,” chimed the baroness.

  “Drawings,” said Ada, nodding, and finally understanding.

  Drina shared with the girls her large, beautiful sketchbooks with very skilled drawings, mostly of the same subject: a small, curly spaniel in a variety of outfits.

  “That’s Dash,” Drina said brightly, “my dog. He’s with the grooms at the moment, but you can meet him later.”

  “Rawrf!” barked the parrot, in an awfully good imitation of a spaniel.

  Ada paid more attention to the style of the drawings than to the subject. Drina had a talent for detail. It reminded Ada of her own drawings, and she reached automatically for pencils that disappointingly failed to be there.

  There were other books, each weighty and marvelous, and all with meticulous drawings of the things in the room: furniture, drapery, cups and saucers, Drina’s own shoes. And several very expert renderings of the parrot, labeled LORY, which was evidently the bird’s name. Taken together, it was ultimately a picture of just how small the little princess’s world really was, and it made Mary sad after a bit.

  The baroness cleared her throat. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “the girls might wish to see the doll room?”

  Nervously, Drina looked again to paintings, clock, and bookcase. The baroness gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, though both Ada and Mary saw it. Drina forced a smile.

  “Would you like to see my dolls?” she asked.

  Ada really had no interest in dolls, and nearly said so, but then she remembered that the princess was the same age as Ada’s little sister, Allegra, and tried to be grown-up by letting her have her way. The fact that Drina was a princess didn’t mean that much to Ada, except for the fact that all the bobbing and curtsying she was supposed to remember to do left her exhausted and irritated. She had little patience remaining, having learned almost nothing thus far. Still, she agreed.

  “Dolls,” said Ada. “Of course.” And she squeezed out a smile of her own, though her cheeks didn’t like it.

  The baroness rose to click open the door at the far end of the room. The palace itself, once she was inside, made little sense to Ada, who counted stairs for comfort and tried to piece together which doors led where. There seemed to have been bits added on to the palace that didn’t quite line up with the older bits, and even though this was expertly masked, the inconsistency bothered Ada more than she liked to admit, even to herself.

  The narrow door, washed in robin’s-egg blue and surrounded by gleaming white, swung open to reveal a kind of dressing room, only it had been converted into a gallery of sorts, with highly polished shelves containing hundreds upon hundreds of dolls.

  Mary too had long outgrown dolls, though she appreciated how delicate, rare, and exquisite each piece in Drina’s collection was.

  Beside each doll was a miniature wardrobe, and once opened (by the gentle hand of the baroness), each revealed a collection of magnificent clothes, tailored for the little figure adjacent.

  Drina was once more staring intently at Ada, as though she were trying to stab an idea into Ada’s brain through her eyeballs. Which she was.

  And it worked.

  “Ah,” said Ada quietly, realizing.

  Drina smiled.

  “Right,” said Ada cheerfully. “Off we go, then.”

  “Ada?” asked Mary.

  “That’s it, visit’s over” was Ada’s answer. “Lovely to meet you! And I’m not just saying that, although I usually am!”

  And without waiting for goodbyes or the escort of footmen, Ada trotted off.

  Flustered, Mary curtsied and umm’d several times in succession, and then took herself rapidly down carpeted hallways in search of her friend.

  “Visit’s over!” squawked Lory the parrot. “Off we go, then!”

  With several more rounds of hurried yet exhausting curtsies, Mary found herself outside the palace, in front of the magnificent carriage. Inside awaited an unusually patient Ada.

  Mary took a gloved hand and climbed aboard, the door silently closed behind her by a well-rehearsed footman. Once seated, Mary noticed that th
e carriage wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Clever, that one,” said Ada, impressed.

  “Which, Ada?” asked Mary. “I must confess I have no idea what happened. It felt to me like the most awkward and uncomfortable encounter in history.”

  Ada thought of another, and was about to bring it up when she decided to let it go.

  “The drawings. The baroness engineered the whole thing. Drina. Brilliant, the lot of them. Well, except that Sir Wrongway.”

  “Please do slow down, Ada. And why are we not going anywhere?” Indeed, the horses had yet to move, awaiting a knock from within the carriage.

  “No, staying here. Going back inside in a minute, actually. The drawings,” Ada continued. “The detail. She draws everything.”

  “I did notice that,” said Mary. “A bit sad, really. Obviously, she barely leaves her rooms.”

  “And yet…,” said Ada, smirking.

  “Oh, you want me to figure this bit out,” realized Mary.

  “Yes. Go on, you’re clever.”

  “Well, she has drawings of everything, really. Dog, parrot, furniture. Down to plates of biscuits.”

  “Except for?” Ada prompted.

  Mary reached in her mind for an image of the rooms she’d seen, and recalled seeing drawings of most of it in Drina’s sketchbooks. Except for…

  “Dolls!” Mary squeaked with excitement. “No pictures of dolls at all! So there must be a separate book just for dolls.”

  “Only she didn’t show us that. And for a reason,” concluded Ada.

  “The reason being?” Mary asked, unsure.

  “Do come on—it’s obvious. Why don’t you show someone something? Because you don’t want to, or you can’t. She wanted to show us everything else, so that’s out. So why can’t she? Is it because she’s not allowed? Or is it because…”

  “Is it because she doesn’t have it to show! So that’s it! That’s our case. The book with the doll drawings is missing!” Mary was terribly excited. The missing book of doll sketches certainly resided at the heart of the case.

  “Yes,” said Ada, agreeing. “But now tell me why it matters.”

  “Well, it’s…it’s…Oh. Oh, yes,” said Mary.

  “We were watched the entire time. She kept looking at parts of the room where she knows the spies hide.”

  “And her diary is read every night,” added Mary.

  Ada nodded. “So any clever girl…”

  “Would develop a code,” said Mary. “And hide it somewhere others might see…”

  “But not notice,” finished Ada. “Specifically, Princess Drina has a sketchbook of her dolls, with the sketches forming a code so that she can write down what she thinks and feels, without anyone being the wiser. Even if they found—or took—the secret diary, all they’d see would be a little girl’s drawings of her doll collection.”

  Both girls blew out big puffs of air, which the dustless carriage failed to illustrate in any way.

  “Well,” said Mary after a brief silence, “now that we know what’s missing, how do we find it?”

  “Oh, we go back in now,” said Ada. “And look for clues.”

  “Now? But it’s the palace. Don’t we need an invitation and all that courtesy and whatnot?”

  “Of course not,” said Ada. “You forgot your gloves.”

  “So I did!” Mary exclaimed, just noticing. “But I’m not sure how.”

  “I got them back from the footman when we arrived,” said Ada, “and dropped them behind a chair. They’re still up there. We can collect the clues then.”

  “Good heavens, you did all that? And what clues?”

  “Dirt, under the door. They must clean the floor hourly, with all that staff, but they missed the underside of the door. And there’s hair by the fireplace. You collect your gloves, wipe one on the mantel, drop the other one by the door, and catch the dirt from the door bottom when you pick it up.”

  “I must say, that’s more up Allegra’s street,” said Mary doubtfully.

  “You can do it. Besides, we’re saving Allegra for later.”

  “Later?”

  “When we break in.”

  “Break in. To Kensington Palace.” Mary was dubious.

  “We can hardly investigate while we’re being spied on. So we’ll have to spy on the spies when they’re not looking.”

  “You can’t just ask for a sleepover?” asked Mary.

  “I’m not Libby. I can’t just do that,” said Ada. “Even if I did ask, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Oh,” said Mary. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. You’ve never mentioned a cousin before.”

  “Libby.” Ada frowned. “Medora. She gets a whole other name when she’s…My mum would make me go to court, when I was small. I don’t…It’s too much. Libby was always chatty and she…I don’t know. She belonged and I didn’t. Don’t.”

  “I must say,” soothed Mary, “you’re doing awfully well. With all of this, I mean.” She waved her ungloved hand about the carriage, the palace. All of that. Ada wasn’t usually comfortable outside her own home. Or around so many people.

  “Hmph,” hmphed Ada, quickly changing the subject. “Let’s question the witnesses.”

  “What witnesses? I thought we were gathering clues.”

  “Drina is under constant surveillance. And there must be half of London working in there as servants. There are witnesses. We just have to find them,” Ada said.

  “Anyway. Gloves.”

  The footmen tried their very best to pretend that it was not in any way strange or uncommon for the girls to pop in and then back out of the carriage without going anywhere. Mary wasn’t quite sure if Ada relied on others’ being too polite to mention her odd behavior, or if she truly didn’t realize her behavior was odd. In any event, she charged back up the stairs, and doors opened, and servants stood aside while Ada either pretended they weren’t there or honestly forgot to notice. Even Mary gave up on the bobbing and nodding and curtsying, and instead focused on not tripping over the carpet.

  By the time Mary arrived in Drina’s parlor, Ada had already corralled those whom the girls had met: Baroness Lehzen, Sir John, and Drina herself, in a manner that did not strike Mary as particularly clandestine. But Ada was staring right past all of them, and could not see the expressions of shock on the gathered faces.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary tried to soothe. “I seem to have dropped my gloves.” Then she made a show of looking all around before spotting them behind a chair and retrieving them.

  As she did, a small spaniel in a little red jacket with gold braid on the shoulders rushed in. The dog yapped sharply, and Mary popped up again and Ada turned.

  “Dog,” Ada said.

  “That’s Dash,” Drina said happily. “My spaniel.”

  “No, not the spaniel,” said Ada, from a great distance. “The parrot,” she concluded.

  “The parrot?” asked the baroness.

  “Lory,” Drina clarified.

  “Yap!” yapped Dash.

  “Inedible!” squawked Lory.

  “Indebted,” said Sir John, agreeing, though Ada knew he meant “indeed” or perhaps “indubitably,” or she would have were she listening, which she wasn’t.

  “How long does he…he?” Ada asked.

  “He,” Drina confirmed, nodding.

  “He stay here? In this room, I mean.”

  “Always,” answered Baroness Lehzen calmly.

  “So he’s a witness,” Ada declared.

  “Witness?” asked Sir John, finally getting a word right. “To what?”

  Mary remembered her clandestine tasks, so while everyone was focused on Ada, she dropped a glove, made an oh-I’m-so-terribly-clumsy face, and bobbed to pick it up again. There was a smear of dirt on it from the bottom of the door.<
br />
  “Lory,” Ada began. “Have you seen anyone in here, snooping about?”

  “I say,” Sir John did say. “This is all terribly unequinox.”

  Mary was certain he meant to say “unorthodox,” or “strange.” In fact, he meant it to mean more than that, in a stop-what-you-are-doing-at-once sort of way.

  “Oozmansvo denenvuk!” squawked Lory. “Asmegratoo!”

  “Gibberish,” said Baroness Lehzen.

  “Does he always do that?” Ada asked Drina.

  “No,” the princess answered. “He usually repeats what he hears.”

  “German?” Ada pondered. “Is that German?”

  “No,” said the baroness, before Drina could answer.

  Mary caught an accusing glance between Sir John and Drina, and remembered that Drina was meant to feel guilty for “sounding German,” although she certainly sounded English to Mary.

  “Perhaps it is Turkish,” Baroness Lehzen suggested.

  “It’s not Turkish,” murmured Ada, her head busy. “I know a little Turkish, and that’s not quite right.”

  “Perhaps it’s Turkish with a parrot accent?” offered Mary, who suddenly wished she hadn’t.

  “Might it be Polish?” said Sir John. It was the first intelligible and practical thing the girls had heard him say.

  “Well, does anyone here speak Polish, so that we can figure out what the parrot is saying?” Ada looked at a wall of blank faces.

  Drina spoke. “One of the maids is Polish.”

  Sir John sighed. “You’ve been speaking to the maids? How inapropeller,” he said. He glared at Baroness Lehzen, as though it were her fault.

  Ada’s eye twitched, but the baroness rose and went to the door, whispering to the footman to fetch the maid. The room waited in awkward silence while the parrot stuck his beak in his armpit, and the dog sniffed things happily.

  Shortly, a flustered girl in a maid’s uniform, barely older than Drina herself, shuffled into the room and performed an unpracticed curtsy.