Rather, deciphered.
When I felt sure the fan’s pink paper had yielded all the brown lines that it was likely to show me, I hurried to sit down with my writing desk in my lap, snatched up some foolscap paper, and began to copy the missive in pencil in case the original might fade. Even now it was difficult to see clearly. With some guesswork I transcribed it thus:
Several weeks earlier, during a period of inactivity and, I must confess, loneliness, I had obtained and read a publication upon the subject of secret writing and ciphers. Not something I would normally pick up, but this particular “trifling monograph” (his own words) had been authored by Sherlock Holmes, my brother; I had read and reread it just to “hear” his precise and coolly passionate voice.
Thanks to Sherlock, then, I knew that what I saw before me was called the “Mason” cipher, having been invented by Freemasons in the past century—but I could easily have solved it even before having read my brother’s excellent text, for this “secret code” was no secret, being commonly used among schoolchildren everywhere. Indeed, it could be decoded so simply that I wondered why Lady Cecily had bothered to use a cipher at all.
At the top of my paper I scrawled the key:
To encipher from this, one drew the shape of each letter’s container, so to speak. Absurdly simple. Deciphering was just as easy. Referring back to the secret message, I quickly translated it, thus:
HELCLOCKEDIA
EBBMFGAEIED
UNLES
That was all.
“Curses,” I grumbled, glaring at the less-than-satisfactory message before me. The only words that made any sense were clock and, at the end, unless, misspelled.
“Unless”? Unless what? The word suggested altercation. Do such-and-so unless you want a thrashing, or won’t do such-and-so unless…
Unless what? A sentence ought not to end with unless.
Unless the word were not misspelled, but incomplete? The message had been interrupted? Suggesting duress?
I felt in my bones that I had hit upon the truth; Lady Cecily had been unable to finish her message. Evidently she was closely watched. I wished she had simply written in plain English, for she could have managed that more quickly.
But then I realised why she had not done so. “Invisible” ink, although it dries clear, is not actually impossible to see; it leaves a sheen noticeable in certain lights. Handwriting might have been detected. But the straight-lined cipher had concealed itself nicely along the folds of the fan, looking like a sort of decoration, while being simple for a recipient to solve.
Clever.
And desperate. A cipher secretly written in invisible ink on a paper fan of all things, then slipped to someone she met by accident, someone she barely knew—certainly such a cipher ought to be a plea for assistance, for rescue, for help—
Of course.
The first four letters were not HELC; they were HELP. The cipher for P looked just like the cipher for C except that it included a dot, which evidently I had not perceived.
What of clock, then?
Eureka! The next word had to be locked!
Feverishly addressing my pencil to the cipher again, mindful of missing dots, I eventually arrived at the following:
Deciphered:
HELPLOCKEDIN
ROOMSTARVED
UNLES
Or, in plainer English, “Help! I am being locked in my room and starved—unless…”
I must admit that my first reaction upon reading this was one of immense gratification; I felt all of the thrill of the chase. And of elucidation: Eureka! I understood why Lady Cecily had worn such a silly thing as a bell skirt. She had been forced to do so, in order to hobble her so that she could not possibly run away from her dragonish chaperones. Now, with her errands completed, she was, presumably, locked away again. But where? Here was a case of a missing person indeed! I anticipated search, adventure, perhaps even a rescue—
But immediately my fervour turned to horror for Cecily’s sake. Could I find her in time? Could I find her before—
What? She was being locked up and starved unless what?
Unless she yielded to some demand, obviously. Unless she obeyed some command she had so far defied. Unless she agreed to—
“Oh, no,” I whispered as I remembered. “Oh, how awful! Could it be?”
A trousseau you will need, and a trousseau you shall have, one of the guardian dowagers had said.
I had no very clear idea what a trousseau looked like or what might be included in one; to the best of my knowledge it consisted of expensive, lacy unmentionables. But I knew what a trousseau was for.
They had brought her to London to shop for a trousseau.
This meant that there was none prepared already—there had been no period of engagement during which ribbons and ruffles might lovingly be stitched—and there was no time to order a supremely fashionable one from abroad.
In my horror I leapt to my feet, spilling paper, pencil, and writing desk to the floor.
Lady Cecily was going to be married.
Soon.
And against her will.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
I HAD TO FIND HER. HAD TO FIND LADY CECILY AND rescue her from such a dreadful and unjust fate.
But how?
Enola, calm yourself. Think. That voice from within—it was as if my mother spoke to me, and for a moment Mum’s face filled my mind.
A comforting memory, but with it came a discomfiting thought: I had been putting off the task of finding Mum. Why?
Did I really not wish to see her?
What sort of daughter was I?
But then again, it was Mum who had first run away, not I.
Yet hadn’t I forgiven her?
Blast everything! Confound questions I could not answer—no, did not wish to answer.
Mentally thrusting them to the side, I sat down, picked up pencil and paper again, and told myself that, being in such dire straits, Lady Cecily came foremost. Then Mum. Then, a distant third, the Army general’s leg-bone, which, after all, he no longer needed for any practical purpose.
Regarding Lady Cecily, what concerning her difficulty did I know surely?
Next to nothing.
Very well; what could I surmise?
I wrote:
Her mother is in seclusion
I cannot imagine Lady Theodora favouring forced marriage
Lady Cecily has been taken away from her mother
Probably Sir Eustace’s idea
Which made sense. What to do with an unconventional, politically opinionated, distressingly left-handed daughter who has been scandalously kidnapped and will therefore be considered spoilt goods upon the marriage market? Why, bypass the usual coming-out by arranging some private disposal of the girl, probably by financial inducement.
It appeared that the two dragons with whom I had seen Cecily had charge of her for the time being. My task now was to identify and locate them.
I wrote,
Her chaperones, proud and richly clothed, seem to be of noble blood
The chaperones seemed to wield familial authority over her
They dressed her in greenish yellow; might they be of Aesthetic taste?
Cecily and her entourage took a cab, number _______
She most likely got the fan attending a pink tea—the Viscountess of Inglethorpe’s pink tea?
All in all, not very helpful.
Although I could not remember the number of the cab, still, I decided, I could be moderately proud of myself for having remembered the name of the viscountess.
Indeed, it was my only clue.
If any of the society papers might, perhaps, have run a little “piece” about her pink tea party and…supposing that the chaperones had attended along with Lady Cecily…if I could find an account that listed the names of the guests…
But as my eyes turned towards the pile of rubbish I would have to read, I groaned aloud. Even if I found what I was looking for, then it would be necessary
for me somehow to sort through the guests in order to find Lady Cecily’s ogresses-in-waiting. Or even worse, what if I scanned the confounded papers for hours and hours and, after all, the viscountess’s blasted tea party were not even there? A viscountess was not, after all, the social equal of a duke’s wife or even an earl’s; what if no society reporter had bothered to—
An idea caught hold with such force that my breath snagged in my throat. I let it stay there for a moment as I considered. Then, breathing out, I smiled.
While I had no actual knowledge of what a society reporter might be like, I could imagine: a female with more education than means, a genteel miss rather like a governess, obliged to make a living until she found a man to take care of her. Her clothing might be plain, even threadworn, but never lacking in taste. An object of kindness and condescension.
In great haste I began to hunt up my very proper, all-purpose brown tweed suit. Because I had skipped luncheon, there would still be time today.
An hour or so later, in the aforementioned well-worn suit, neatly gloved and hiding beneath a brown hat’s veil, with a stenographer’s notebook and a bundle of pencils in hand, I presented myself at the door of the Viscount of Inglethorpe’s city residence.
To the oversized tin soldier of a butler who eventually answered my knock, I said, “I am from the Women’s Gazette.” I had checked many back issues of this much-admired publication, found no mention of anything Inglethorpe, and felt myself to be treading on fairly safe ground as I went on. “They have sent me to see whether I might do a feature on the viscountess’s pink tea.”
“A bit late, aren’t you?” rumbled the butler. “That was over a week ago.”
When in doubt, say nothing. I replied only with a meek smile.
His brows drew together. “Don’t you have a card?”
“I’m new,” I improvised. “They haven’t printed me one yet.”
“Oh, so that’s the way it is. They send out a novice a week late.” I did not mind the resentment in his tone, for it showed that I had guessed rightly: the Viscountess of Inglethorpe quite wanted to be included in the society papers with the same frequency and scope as, for instance, a duchess; the viscountess felt herself much neglected in the ladies’ press, and her household, naturally, shared this sentiment.
I repressed a smile, feeling sure now that I would be admitted; such vanity could not turn me away.
Indeed, even as the butler betook himself upstairs to consult with Lady Inglethorpe, already the housekeeper, an unexpectedly pleasant woman named Dawson, was showing me into the morning-room where the tea had taken place.
“We’ve left it just so,” she was saying, “except for the flowers, of course, until the room is needed for something else, for my lady took great pains over the effect and likes to admire it.”
Admire was perhaps not the word I would have used, for I felt as if I had stepped into a cow’s udder. Never before had I entertained any prejudice against the colour pink, but I began to loathe it in that moment as I stood beneath pink-draped windows with pink lambrequins, tables swaddled in pink, walls—
Recollecting my guise, and also in order to hide my face in case it showed a touch of nausea, I flipped open a notebook and began feverishly to take notes: pink grosgrain ribbon swags on dado and pictures, pink net billowing down from the ceiling, pink Japanese lanterns dangling from pink crocheted strings.
“We served coconut cakes iced pink and white, and we put pink ices shaped like cupids and swans on the tables. Her ladyship wore a pink tea-frock that come all the way from France, and us servants had pink caps and pink aprons made special for the occasion. Oh, with the pink candles and all, it was like a pink fairy-land in here!”
Clenching my teeth against any heartfelt retort, scribbling, I muttered, “Flowers?”
“Oh! The most lovely masses of pink cabbage roses, and for the gentlemen’s buttonholes, pinks, only they were white—the flowers might be any colour but they are called ‘pinks,’ you know.”
“Yes, I see.” I forced a smile. “How witty.”
“Her ladyship’s idea. And for favours, there were pink paper fans for the ladies, and pink paper top-hats for the gentlemen.”
Hollowly I responded, “How very amusing.”
“Yes, great fun they had with them.”
Finally, a chance at the information I wanted. “And the guests were?”
“Jacobs has gone to ask the viscountess whether he might give a copy of the guest list to you. Shall we go see whether he has come down?”
“Please.” I am sure my tone sounded a bit too fervid; being in that room made me feel as if I had gorged upon sugar-plums. I drew a deep and thankful breath as we walked back into the more normally embellished hallway of the mansion.
But as we passed the drawing-room door, which stood open, I jolted to an abrupt halt, staring.
“Splendid, isn’t it?” the housekeeper remarked when she realised what had distracted my attention.
At the far end of the formal room, in the place of honour over the mantel of the hearth, hung a large gold-framed oil portrait of a lady elegantly bestowed upon a fainting-sofa, a head-to-toe and nearly life-sized rendition of her carelessly holding a white Persian cat upon the most elaborate crimson figured-silk gown I had ever imagined or seen. Let me remark, as an aside, that the idea of keeping a house-cat in a mansion full of expensive china has always struck me as absurd, but it seems that the richer one is, the more one must show off such idiotic behaviour as endangering one’s Waterford crystal, or clutching to one’s bosom a creature guaranteed to rub white fur all over one’s sable ruche. However, it was not any of these considerations, nor yet the remarkably in-full-fig costume of the woman in the portrait, that stopped my steps.
Rather, it was the dainty features of her fleshy face.
“That’s my mistress, of course,” the housekeeper was saying.
The viscountess: one of the matrons whom I had seen in the Ladies’ Lavatory.
I had scarcely time to realise the peril in which I had placed myself before the butler’s voice sounded behind me: “Lady Otelia Thoroughfinch, Viscountess of Inglethorpe, wishes to see you in her private sitting-room.”
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
OH.
The viscountess herself.
Oh, my. I felt an almost insurmountable urge to flee, as if somehow she knew—which of course she couldn’t possibly—but what if she recognised me? And what if she then realised that I was not from the Women’s Gazette at all, but was poking my rather pronounced nose into her affairs? What if she suspected I was in receipt of a peculiar pink fan—
All these frightened thoughts cried out in my mind even before I turned to follow the butler upstairs. At times such as these it is a very good thing that my father had been a logician, and I had educated myself with his books, as follows:
Premise: Viscountess Inglethorpe and I occupied the parlour of the Ladies’ Lavatory at the same time.
Premise: She will recognise me.
Conclusion: Inconclusive.
Weak premise: She noticed me and recognises me.
Premise: She will realise I am NOT a reporter from the Women’s Gazette.
Conclusion: Not valid, as such a reporter might very well use the Ladies’ Lavatory.
However, just as these calming, rational thoughts began to take hold—also, just as I achieved the top of the stairway—there was a bang as the heavy front door whammed open, and a man’s voice roared, “Ha-ha!”
I jumped and squeaked like a snared rabbit, for it was the voice of the exceedingly inhospitable man with the mastiff and the sunk fence!
But it couldn’t be! my logical mind attempted once more to intercede. What possible reason—
“Ha-ha! Here we are!”
The butler, who in the expressionless way of butlers seemed as startled as I, said, “Excuse me just a moment, miss,” and went downstairs again to see what was what, leaving me peering over the railing.
“Fil
e on in! Ha-ha! Gawk all you please, ragamuffins.”
Oh, my evil stars, I could see now—it was the same burly man who had threatened to leave me rotting in his midnight ditch. Progressing into the entry hall resplendent in ascot, paddock-jacket, charcoal breeches, and cream-coloured gaiters, with his pugnacious face straining to maintain a smirk that was probably intended to be a smile, he was followed by a most unlikely company: orphans filing in two by two, little girls in the traditionally hideous brown gingham pinafores, with their hair cropped so short (for the prevention of lice) that they scarcely looked female despite their ruffled caps.
The butler approached the ha-ha man and bowed gravely, murmuring something.
“Just giving the little beggars a treat, ha-ha!” the man roared. From my refuge behind the stair railings I watched in fascination as his balding forehead turned tomato red. “Anything wrong with that?” The butler’s deferential manner had apparently concealed some question of the man’s presence under the circumstances.
“Look but don’t touch,” admonished a starchy middle-aged female at the end of the brown gingham line—a matron of the orphanage, I knew the instant I saw her, not merely because of her plain brown dress and her even more severe demeanour, but because she wore, like all such matrons, the most outlandish and unmistakable hat, white cotton starched into the shape of an inverted tulip with ruffles around its edge. The minute I had a chance, I must draw a picture of an orphanage matron like a plain brown tower with a bulbous white beacon on top.
“Shall I notify the viscountess?” the butler was asking. Or not asking, really. Warning.
“No need! Just showing the darlings what they have to look forward to, ha-ha! If they go into service in my house, you know, ha-ha!” With which outrageous statement—for quite plainly, from the butler’s manner, this was not his house—the smirking and glowering mastiff-like man bellowed, “This way, urchins!” and strode onward. Huddled shoulder to shoulder, clutching each other’s hands, with their faces displaying the terror I felt, the orphans followed more slowly. From behind, the matron herded them as they all disappeared from my view beneath the stairway from which I watched. Even though I knew that the ha-ha man had not seen me, and would not have recognised me in any event—even so, my heart thumped, and while ladies never sweat, or even perspire, certainly I felt my personage pass into the condition known as “all in a glow.”
The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Page 4
