The butler returned upstairs, his white face so eloquently blank that I dared not ask him who the ha-ha man was. Indeed, I dared not speak.
With difficulty I made myself let go of the stair railing to which I had been clinging. In icy silence the butler showed me to a door. “Miss, um, the journalistic personage of whom I informed you, my lady,” he announced me as he opened it. He intended, it seemed, to allow his mistress to remain ignorant of the invasion downstairs, at least for the moment and in my dubious presence.
“Yes. Quite.” As the viscountess brusquely gestured for me to enter, she scarcely looked at me, thank goodness; after a moment I was able to take a deep breath and regain some measure of calm. Her ladyship did not, of course, invite me to be seated; a common news-reporter would not be staying long. Nor did she give me a chance to ask her any questions; she quite took charge. “I want you to see what I wore for the pink tea.” On cue, a maid-in-waiting emerged from a walk-in closet, carrying a fabric confection of pink. “That is a Worth gown,” the viscountess declared, and she began to read aloud from a salon program. “‘This exquisite tea-gown is fashioned from pink chine pompadour taffeta with graceful godet pleating, trimmed around the—’ Write it down! I want you to get it all just as I say.”
Obediently I scribbled, meanwhile aware that the jade damask at-home day-dress the viscountess wore might be described every bit as elaborately; indeed, it seemed to me one might almost be presented to the queen in it. It could not have been more apparent to me that this woman had aspirations above her station.
“‘—trimmed around the neckline with puffed white tulle over scallops of pearl-studded sateen, while a double strand of rare pink pearls begins at the bust and drapes to the right side of the skirt, fastened there with a clasp of pink gold inspired by Michelangelo’s sibyls of the Sistine Chapel’—have you got all that?”
“Yes, my lady,” I lied. “And might I inquire the names of those who attended, my lady?” Now that I knew who the viscountess was, I wanted to find out who had been the other dragonish dowager accompanying her, with Lady Cecily, on the occasion when I had first encountered them. I hoped the other ogress’s identity might be disclosed by the pink tea guest list.
“Oh! Yes, I have the list here. There was the Countess of Woodcrock, of course.” (She said this in such a by-the-bye manner that I knew the countess was her prize catch for the event.) “Lady Dinah Woodcrock; Count Thaddeus was unfortunately unable to attend. And then there were the three daughters of the Earl of Throstlebine, the Honourable Misses Ermengarde, Ermentrude, and Ermenine Crowe, escorted by—”
This went on and on, until I began to despair of ever sorting it out.
“…and the Baroness Merganser. Lady Aquilla Merganser. She is my sister, you know.”
“Oh, really?” My interest was not feigned; did this sister by any chance look almost exactly like her? Was Lady Aquilla Merganser the one—
“Indeed. Aquilla married rather beneath her station, I fear.” (Pompous nonsense, for, practically speaking, a baron is no better or worse a creature than a viscount.) “Her husband did not attend, but she brought along her son, Bramwell, and his fiancée, the Honourable Cecily Alistair.”
Yes! Oh, yes! As one ogress was the viscountess, almost certainly the other ogress had to be her sister Aquilla, who had a son named Bramwell, who intended to marry the unfortunate Lady Cecily. Finding it very difficult to hide my excitement as I scrawled the names, I babbled, “A very attractive young lady, I am sure.”
“She could be, if she would trouble herself. Quite spoilt, and rather a child, I fear.” But then, abruptly, as if my interest in Lady Cecily caused her to close a door on further discourse, Lady Otelia turned her back—her derriere, I noticed, showed the effect of too much horseback riding on a sidesaddle, being visibly assymetrical, the right part higher than the left. With difficulty I suppressed a smile.
The viscountess gestured dismissal. “That is all.”
“Yes, my lady.” One must play one’s part; I actually bobbed a sort of curtsey. “Thank you, my lady.”
The butler waited to show me out, his demeanour now so upright as to be nearly martial. I wondered whether the apparently uninvited parade of orphans had yet left the premises. But I did not dare mention them, for I had a request to make. Once safely down the stairs, I asked whether I might speak with the housekeeper, Dawson, again.
“Just for a moment, to thank her for her helpfulness,” I toadied.
With lofty indifference the butler assented. A few moments later, the friendly Dawson sat down in the servants’ lounge with me. She was pleased to go over the pink tea’s guest list with me in much greater detail than her mistress had done.
I will spare the gentle reader any account of the gossip that necessarily preceded what I wanted to know. I encouraged several minutes of “confidences” before I felt it safe to display curiosity regarding Viscountess Otelia and her sister Lady Aquilla.
“Oh, yes,” declared the good Dawson, “as like as two peas in a pod, they are.”
Eureka! I thought. Just as I had surmised, it must have been Baroness Aquilla I had seen with Viscountess Otelia and Lady Cecily in the Ladies’ Lavatory.
My poor left-handed lady! I suppressed an urge to shudder for her: As Bramwell Merganser, the groom-to-be, was Aquilla’s son, then unless I could thwart her scheme, that “charming” woman would become poor Cecily’s mother-in-law.
Although yearning to know more of the proposed wedding, I needed to proceed carefully with Dawson, so as not to arouse suspicion; even the most garrulous servant retains loyalty to her mistress. I made myself sit back in my chair across the tea-table from her. “Have they many children?” I asked, as this was the question that would most naturally arise next concerning the sisters Otelia and Aquilla. The propagation of numerous children, although a nuisance among the lower classes, was considered quite a virtue among the gentry, exemplified by Queen Victoria herself, who had produced nine.
“Sadly, my lady the viscountess has no living progeny,” said Dawson with sympathy, yet at the same time a certain relish that the tragedy of child mortality, due to spotted fever and the like, was not confined to the lower classes. “And of Baroness Aquilla’s five, only Bramwell has survived to adulthood. She has made rather a mama’s boy of him, I fear,” added Dawson pensively as she refilled our teacups.
Outwardly, I hope, I remained bland, but inwardly I bayed and panted, a hound hot on the scent. “Indeed? How old is he?”
“Nearly thirty, and still living at home, doing nothing on his own. And he appears to be likely to spend the rest of his life that way, for all that he’s soon to be married.”
“Yes, so I see!” Very natural, my curiosity, very innocent. “This Lady Cecily Alistair, who is she?”
“A cousin. Her father, Eustace Alistair, is Lady Aquilla’s brother, and Lady Otelia’s, of course.”
Oh, dear. How odious. Yet there was nothing scandalous in the arrangement, for cousins marrying cousins is a common practice among blue-bloods, to keep property in the family. With the unintentional effect, according to Malthus, that each generation grows uglier than the last.
And marrying his daughter to his sister’s son was exactly the sort of thing Sir Eustace would do. I remembered how his concern had been all for hushing up scandal, rather than for his daughter’s safety, when Cecily had been kidnapped. After her return, I felt sure, he had regarded her not as a victim but as a disgrace. He had no concern for her sensibilities. In order to avoid any further embarrassment to himself, therefore, he had arranged to marry her off privately rather than have her presented at court. I wondered how much dowry he had paid to the Mergansers.
Dawson awaited my response. “Um, a good match,” I ventured.
“Yes, indeed, a very good match it is.”
All this time I had put off a fascinating but indelicate question: I quite wanted to know who the ha-ha man was—a gentleman, by his dress, perhaps even titled, with some connection to th
is household? Therefore, even though I knew otherwise, I asked, “Was it Sir Eustace, by any chance, who so kindly escorted the orphans—”
But I had reached the limits of Dawson’s willingness to divulge. She responded only with gentle distress: “No, indeed, that was not Sir Eustace, and as for his bringing those—those dreadfully common children into this house unannounced…But it’s not my place to say more. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
I RETURNED TO “ DR. RAGOSTIN’S” OFFICE IN AN uncertain frame of mind. Poor Cecily, poor high-minded, artistic, free-spirited girl! I knew how she felt as the whole world, seemingly, attempted to break that spirit. I knew what it was like to be a young female utterly at the mercy of relatives and legal guardians, forced into obedience. Only my mother’s cleverness had saved me.
How was I to save Lady Cecily?
After lighting the gas-lamps, I made immediately for the bookshelves and seized upon Boyles, one’s indispensable guide to the aristocracy. Having had no luncheon made me cross and stubborn, so much so that I refused to go home for dinner; instead I sat down at once to look up “Inglethorpe” and “Merganser,” then proceed onward to other references until eventually I pieced together a sequence of events.
The father of Eustace, Aquilla, and Otelia, I discovered, had been the merest baronet—Sir Dorian Alistair, Bt.—not a lord, not even a member of the peerage. Moreover, his means had been in no way equal to his aspirations. However, he and his wife had put on a good show when it came time to launch their two daughters into society, and both Otelia and Aquilla apparently had possessed sufficient beauty and charm (although I found this hard to imagine) to marry “up.” Eustace, also, had done very well by marrying Lady Theodora.
Boyles took me no farther, but from my personal knowledge, having met Lady Theodora, apparently the heavens were to be blessed that Sir Eustace’s children took after their mother, not their father.
I knew that Lady Cecily vehemently disagreed with her father’s views of charity (he gave none), society (heights to be climbed), and a woman’s place (obey).
I wondered how much Lady Cecily’s cousin, whom she was being forced to marry, resembled her father.
How very unfair that such an innocent, intelligent, sensitive girl—Cecily would have given her shoes to a beggar—that such a young lady should have been, first, cursed with Sir Eustace for a father, then kidnapped by a conniving villain—and now, now locked in a room and starved—where?
Boyles gave me Baron Merganser’s London address, and it seemed sensible to start looking there. At once.
One cannot always and forever be changing clothes, especially if one were to have a look at the Merganser residence while there was still some daylight; the brown tweed suit would do, I told myself firmly. It was dark enough, as were my grey stockings and brown boots. The only thing likely to give me away in the night was my white collar, which I could remove when it was time. Thinking along these lines, I delayed only to snatch up several potentially useful items, jamming them into a carpet-bag.
Swinging this, I hailed a cab, a four-wheeler. “To Oakley Street,” I told the driver, “and then just drive slowly.” While sighing over the fee the man named, I reminded myself that in his vehicle I could see without being seen.
A very good thing, as I am sure my jaw dropped to my collar-ruffle when I sighted the house.
Could I have mistaken the address? No; the numbers were quite clearly displayed upon the gatepost of the spiked wrought-iron fence which surrounded an ivy-shrouded mansion amid copper beeches, their spreading limbs and odd russet leaves shading the grounds. Yes, there had been beeches…but could I be confused in my recollection? I certainly hoped so; a couple of blocks farther on, signalling the driver to stop, I told him to turn around and drive slowly back again.
So that I could take another look.
Which, no happier than the first, confirmed what I wished not to be the case: Baron Merganser’s London home—an exceedingly ugly “pointed Gothic” edifice of steeply gabled grey stone, very likely complete with gargoyles—was the selfsame place at which, as a midden-picker, I had encountered a large and unpleasant man, a quite ferocious mastiff, and—most peculiar—a sunk fence.
I now realized who that ha-ha man must be, having seen him today, expensively dressed although most incongruously consorting with orphans—a circumstance which failed to lessen my fear of him—in a location that could hardly be coincidental.
Turning matters over in my mind, I felt dreadfully weary, entertaining a strong desire to go home and rest.
Instead, I had the cab drive me towards Covent Garden, where at a busy corner I dismissed it. From a street vendor I purchased some biscuits and a lemonade, forcing myself to eat and drink as I considered what I might do next.
Then, after a bit of wandering I found a butcher’s stall, where I bought a large soup-bone with plenty of tasty-looking meat and gristle on it.
This, I thought as I stowed it (well-wrapped in brown paper) in my now-bulging carpet-bag, would distract the mastiff while I climbed the fence.
As for crossing the ha-ha—well, I had learned my lesson a few weeks prior when I had found myself climbing the wall of a most precipitous house, nearly falling half a dozen times before I had made my way to the rooftop, which had proved to be no less treacherous, plummeting me through glass—but I digress. My point is that, after surviving this fiasco with nothing worse than a few cuts, I had purchased a goodly length of strong rope and promised myself that never again would I venture into any irregular situation without it. Indeed, its tidy coils nestled beneath the soup-bone in my carpet-bag.
With the rope I should be able to improvise some way to achieve the other side of the ha-ha.
After which—I tried to plan as I walked to the nearest Underground station and waited upon the platform for the train that was to take me back towards my fateful destination—after which all I needed to do was get into the house, evade detection, find Lady Cecily, release her from captivity, and bring her away with me?
Heaven help me.
Quite a bit later, when it seemed reasonable to think that folk were abed, after the house-windows had gone dim and the streets quiet except for the monotonous tread of the constable, I slipped up to a certain wrought-iron fence, beside the carriage-house this time. There I unwrapped the soup-bone from its brown paper and lobbed it into the Merganser yard through the bars, pleased to see it land just where I intended, in front of the doghouse. I expected that the mastiff would then come charging out and give a woof or two before he discovered his treat.
However, the dog did not bark; indeed, I saw no sign of him. As before, gas-jets ranged around the outside of the house lit up the environs—what a reckless expenditure!—and I waited several moments, expecting the dog to appear out of some shadow, but he did not.
Hmm.
Might he be sound asleep in his lair?
I mistrusted such good luck, but saw no alternative except to continue. Softly I made my way to the corner of the fence behind the carriage-house, where the friendly shadows gathered thickest, and there, hanging my carpet-bag from my belt and knotting my skirt above my knees, I climbed.
No stable-boy shouted as I let myself down the fence’s inner side. No watchdog barked. No alarm of any kind sounded.
Rather than soothing my apprehensions, however, the silence worried me. It seemed too lucky. As if I might be entering a trap.
Yet I felt there was no choice but to go on.
And next, I had to find a way across the sunk fence.
Before moving out of the shadows, I got down close to the ground, because I knew, from my childhood experience of country life, that this was what poachers did in order to make themselves less likely to be seen when venturing across open expanses of forbidden land. Crawling, therefore, I crept towards the edge of the ditch, alert in every sense for any disturbance in the night. Even my skin and the roots of my hair seemed to hearken.
I heard t
he distant rumble of wheels and clop of hooves on cobbles, the equally distant creak of some privy door swinging on its hinges, and high overhead, beech leaves rustling in a light breeze. Nothing more.
Until a voice spoke from somewhere quite nearby, shocking me rigid.
In a pent whisper it said, “Confound the entire wretched business.”
A man’s voice.
“I shall be a laughingstock,” he whispered on with the fervour of one who vocalises merely to rid himself of unruly emotion. “How could I fail to foresee a device so childishly simple?”
He spoke, I realised, from the depths of the ha-ha.
His was a voice I had heard before.
Somehow my body recognised it in advance of my mind, which still lacked proper function due to shock and terror. But my skin and my limbs felt no fear. Quite the opposite. They hurried me forward, still crawling, until I could look over the edge into the ditch.
Ten feet from me, at the bottom of that dark abyss, the midnight mutterer had lit a match in order to study his predicament, so I saw him clearly. He wore black clothing, a black cap, and he had darkened his face with soot, but I knew him readily enough.
My brother Sherlock.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
MY EMOTIONS MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN A STAMPEDE of wild horses, they knocked me so witless. Yet, I must admit, one of my numerous feelings ran clearly and triumphantly in the fore: sheerest glee.
The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Page 5
