The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals

by Jordan Stratford

  Mrs. Woolcott, with an additional yet futile sigh and possibly a slight rolling of the eyes, retired from the library, closing the door behind her.

  Ada glanced at the missives and began firing unopened letters at Mary, Jane, and Allegra in turn. The girls began to pop open the wax seals and scan the contents.

  “Dates,” said Ada almost immediately. “Dates, dates, dates.”

  “What’s wrong, Lady Ada?” asked Jane.

  “We haven’t had a Wollstonecraft letter for weeks. Then this stack, from yesterday and this morning,” Ada said.

  “So?” asked Allegra.

  “So, it’s wrong. If this were a random sampling, we’d see nothing, and then something. Something is always caused by something else. And nothing’s happened. It’s been dull as ditchwater around here.”

  “So?” asked Allegra again.

  “So, this is not a random increase in messages. It’s not an increase at all,” Ada declared. “MRS. WOOLCOTT!” Ada roared.

  The girls could hear the steps down the hall, and the library door opened. Mrs. Woolcott appeared with a large market basket overflowing with letters, all in bundles, and tied with string. “I assumed you’d want these as well,” she said.

  Allegra set to work at once, snicking open the bundles with her magically appearing and disappearing penknife, and flinging the letters at different girls as though she were dealing cards.

  “Allegra! I had a system!” objected Ada. Allegra shrugged, already reading a letter, and pulling a face.

  “What’s wrong?” whispered Jane.

  “I can’t read this handwriting,” said Allegra.

  “Here, we’ll switch,” Jane offered.

  “I had a system!” Ada insisted.

  And so they began. Each girl would read, in turn, the first few lines of the letters, each asking for help from the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency. Ada would answer each with a sharp “no” or a bored “no” or a pained and frustrated “no.”

  “Dear—” Mary began.

  “No,” clipped Ada.

  “Ada, you can’t possibly—”

  “Can. No.”

  “After a ‘Dear’?” said Mary, bewildered.

  “You read it funny,” said Ada.

  It was Jane’s turn, but she wasn’t reading aloud.

  “Jane?” prodded Mary.

  “Well, you won’t like this one, Ada. It’s just about a missing dog.”

  “Where?” asked Ada, suddenly alert.

  “Lyme Regis, in Dorset,” replied Jane.

  Allegra piped in. “That’s miles away.”

  “Terrier?” asked Ada.

  “What’s that?” asked Allegra.

  “Terrier. Dog. Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Carnivora, Canidae, Canis, Canis lupus, Canis lupus familiaris. Yappy rectangular things. Eyebrows.”

  “Why, yes, Ada, how did you—” Jane began.

  “This one. We take the dog case.” Ada held out her hand, and Jane relinquished the letter.

  Mary knew better than to press further, but Jane and Allegra did not.

  But before they were able to extract any kind of explanation as to why this particular case, they could hear a great flurry of activity downstairs. There was no knock, just the door downstairs and the sound of footmen and luggage and rushing and other such goings-on.

  The library door reopened, and a shocked-looking Mrs. Woolcott entered.

  “Allegra,” she said, “come with me. Now.”

  “Whatever is the—” Jane began.

  Mrs. Woolcott interrupted her, pale and serious. “Allegra. Servants’ stairs. Now. Quick quick.”

  Allegra looked frightened, but Ada trusted Mrs. Woolcott and gave her little sister a reassuring nod.

  “Go,” Ada said.

  “You two,” instructed Mrs. Woolcott to Jane and Mary, “remain in the library, door closed. Silently. Into the bleh closet if you must,” she said, pointing to the half-open door to the room that housed Ada’s tall brass contraption. “Anna will come fetch you when it’s safe. Ada, bed, now, silent as dust. Do you understand?”

  Each girl nodded. Allegra took Mrs. Woolcott’s hand and disappeared down the hall to a narrow door that might be mistaken for a cupboard. Ada knew well the narrow and creaking stairs that led to the back kitchen and pantry, although with no adults in the house, the servants had become accustomed to using the main stairs.

  Ada gave a last, wide-eyed look at Mary, mouthed “hide the letters,” then clicked the library door behind her.

  Christmas, Ada thought. We were supposed to have until Christmas.

  Ada kicked her slippers under the bed and hopped in, pulling the blankets up to hide her cherry dress. She tucked the missing-dog letter under her pillow for safekeeping. There was a clatter of activity in the hall, and she knew, knew in what was supposed to be her fevered blood, that that kind of clatter could only come in the churning wake of her battleship of a mother.

  The baroness had long ago left her daughter Ada to the care of the servants of the Marylebone house, with the strict instruction that none of Ada’s father’s former associates—with the exception of leechy Dr. Polidori—were to be admitted. Peebs had flouted this rule by applying for the job of her tutor using a clandestine name, so that he might keep an eye on the daughter of his deceased friend. For Ada’s father, Lord Byron, and Peebs had indeed been the best of friends, as close as Mary was to Ada. The baroness had tried to fire him, but she wasn’t in London, and Peebs was. Until now.

  The baroness hadn’t left Ada on purpose, really. It was more that the baroness hated the Marylebone house as much as Ada hated change. So while her mother felt she must go, Ada felt she must stay. She wasn’t alone. There was Mr. Franklin, her butler; Miss-Coverlet-now-Mrs.-Woolcott, her former governess; Anna the maid; and Mrs. Chowder—Chowser, Ada corrected herself—the cook. All the other servants—footmen, maids, and scullions—were trundled off to Kirkby Mallory, in Leicestershire. And they were to remain, with all their great many names, at least until Christmas, which was still some weeks away.

  But the clamor of unpacking and unbundling could only mean one thing: the return of the baroness to Marylebone.

  A begloved and bewigged footman swung Ada’s door open, clacked his heels together, and gave an almost mechanical nod. In sailed a woman who always reminded Ada of an ostrich. Right now, an ostrich bearing a wheezing, flat-faced, and snotty pug.

  “Gran?” said Ada—to the ostrich, not the pug.

  “Good heavens, child. It is as I feared. You’re scarcely alive,” said Gran.

  “I’m fine, honestly,” said Ada quietly. “Except for all the leeches.”

  “Leeches. Of course. Best thing for fever. But I can hardly expect a mere child to have a grasp of such things. And your room! How dreadfully unbecoming for a young lady.” Ada’s gran, the Honorable Lady Judith Noel, scanned the room, with its grease-stained carpet, and little tumbleweeds of crumpled paper, and bits and bobs of brass gears, and dissected toys.

  “I am not a mere child,” objected Ada, strongly.

  “Now, now. Do not excite yourself. No doubt that is what attracted the fever. Excitement.”

  “I was caught in a storm,” Ada tried to explain.

  “Nonsense, child. There is no way you could possibly be exposed to anything so dangerous as a storm. You’re a little girl.”

  Ada was about to add that the storm had merely been an inconvenience while she was eavesdropping on rather cruel and horrid criminals, but thought better of it.

  Gran put the pug down, who began snarfling the carpet, leaving little shiny trails of snot wherever it sniffed. As it waddled hurriedly to the corner of the room where Ada had carefully arranged a number of shallow jars of collected soil, the creature’s bloated sausage of a body knocked over several specimens, rolling them all out of order.

  “My dirt map!” exclaimed Ada, nearly jumping out of bed.

  “Dirt? How revolting. We shall have those disposed of at once. Charlemagne
!” Lady Noel called to the pug. “Charlemagne, be a good boy.”

  The dog’s black squashed face attempted to smile, but its tongue fell out instead. Its little pig tail did almost seem to wag, although Ada could not tell if the animal was happy or if it just really had to go to the bathroom.

  “Well, and here you are, without so much as a companion,” Gran said to Ada (she hoped) and not to Charlemagne.

  “But I do have a companion,” said Ada. “Mary—”

  “Oh, I know all about that detective agency nonsense, and that Godwin girl. No, dear, I mean someone of your station. A young lady of breeding. Your cousin Libby, perhaps.”

  Ada was confused, but Gran’s prattle bore the unpleasant odor of “Society,” so she did not ask for clarification.

  “Mary is my friend,” said Ada, perhaps more rudely than she had intended. “And that’s that.”

  “Headstrong. You’ve always been headstrong,” mused Gran.

  “She’s here,” said Ada. “Now. In the library.” All of this was becoming too much for Ada—Mrs. Woolcott keeping her letters from her, the mis-sorting of cases, Jane acting strangely, though Ada didn’t understand exactly how or why, but thought she ought to.

  “Is she, indeed?” Gran raised an eyebrow and shot a look at the footman, who nodded and slipped out.

  Gran scooped up the wheezing bottle-cork of a dog and looked around her with obvious distaste. She waited.

  Mary peeked in the doorway, the footman immediately behind her.

  “Ada?” Mary asked, to see if her friend was all right.

  “Miss Godwin, I presume,” said Gran, looking Mary over.

  “Lady Byron, I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” answered Mary with her best curtsy.

  “Good heavens, child, do you mistake me for my own daughter?” laughed Gran. “Oh, you flatterer, you. It shall get you nowhere, though.” Clearly, she was pleased. “Now, then, let’s have a look at you.” And she reached out to Mary’s chin with thumb and forefinger, turning Mary’s jaw gently to the light, as though she were buying a horse. Charlemagne wheezed and snortled at Mary, seemingly in approval. “Aren’t you a dear. Given a proper match, you could have the world on a pin.”

  “You should rest, child,” Gran said to Ada, but with a meaningful look at Mary. this was a woman who expected to be obeyed.

  With that, the odd ostrich of a woman brushed past Mary and strode from the room, her footman falling in behind.

  Mary shut the door after her.

  “So, that was not your mother?” Mary asked, still a little overwhelmed.

  “Grandmother.”

  “Well,” said Mary, looking for something positive to say. “Does that mean that Allegra can come out of hiding?”

  “No,” said Ada with a sigh. “Intractable.”

  Allegra paced in the white upstairs kitchen. At least, that’s what Ada had always called it, but it was really a butler’s pantry, with a back door to the garden for deliveries, and the distillery closet in which the girls had locked Peebs in their first adventure together.

  It was also a ready source for bread and butter. Ada was in the habit of wandering in and helping herself, as opposed to asking the servants for it, and Allegra had followed suit. The real kitchen was downstairs, at the end of the dim hall where Allegra knew the servants lived, and where a small army of unmet servants were currently installing themselves—more at home here than she was herself.

  This will require some sneaking, Allegra thought.

  The nine-year-old had perfected her sneaking skills in whisper-quiet convents on the Continent, where she’d lived most of her life. And she’d successfully sneaked away from the latest convent altogether to come here and be a Wollstonecraft detective with Ada. Allegra and Ada shared the same father, but not the same mother, and the baroness was likely to explode if she found Allegra here. When the baroness had been far away in the country, that prospect had seemed almost amusing. With the baroness perhaps only a few steps away from her current hiding place, Allegra decided sneaking was the better option and slipped through the door and headed down the stairs.

  This was a relatively easy sneak: the bustling and noise of the movers-in covered the sound of her footsteps. She saw the lean backs of footmen in wigs and maids in caps bending, folding, lifting, sorting, and unpacking, the rooms filling up with trunks and bags and bundles. A room for every one of them. And not a single room, Allegra knew, for her.

  At one end of the hall was the kitchen proper, which Allegra knew well enough to avoid. There, her discovery would be certain. At the other end of the hall was a great green door, one that had always been locked. But now, amazingly, a key protruded from the keyhole.

  Allegra pressed herself to the wall and slowed her breathing. With her eyes, she counted the steps to the beckoning door and watched the fluttering of shadows in the doorframes to the servants’ rooms. She waited for what seemed like hours but was, she knew, only about a dozen heartbeats. She was good at this. She smiled.

  Then perfectly naturally, her timing everything, Allegra strode unhurried down the long corridor to her great green prize and turned the key. Its heavy click was masked by the clamor of pots and pans in the kitchen, and the creak of the hinges was drowned out by that of other doors and cupboards.

  Allegra stepped in and closed the door behind her. For a minute her heart pounded—a reminder that she should have brought the key with her, that someone might turn the key and lock her in, there, in the dark. She shrugged at the thought. She’d find a way out.

  It was not completely dark. Gas lamps in sconces along the brick walls were turned almost all the way down, lighting the top stairs, with the rest falling into the gloom. But a small brass key, like the windup on the back of a marching doll, was set into the brick, and a half turn woke all the flames up.

  There was light enough to show the way. At the bottom of the rough wooden stairs waited another stout oak door, with an old-fashioned iron ring for a handle. Behind that (and Allegra was slightly disappointed to find that bats did not fly out of the darkness when she opened it) was a stone stairwell, and at the bottom, a forgotten secret laboratory.

  Allegra turned up the gaslights. Before her were hefty oaken tables, longer than any she had ever seen, a stone floor swept recently, and relatively organized and squared-away stacks of papers. There were bins for mechanical parts, and gears sorted by size, and neat bundles of wire in copper and brass. Iron tools hung from the wall. Jars containing specimens, concoctions, and potions, which, on closer inspection, proved to be salts, crystals, and acids, all labeled first in a hurried scrawl and then again in a more patient hand—presumably Ada’s and then Mrs. Woolcott’s.

  There were blueprints, and tables of mathematical calculations, and a sketch of blocks, and pipes, and something that looked like the inner workings of the ratcheting spindles of a music box. Allegra’s fingers dusted the paper.

  “It’s the bleh,” she said aloud in amazement.

  “This is where she built it. Or the parts of it,” came Mrs. Woolcott’s voice behind her.

  Allegra nearly jumped out of her skin. Mrs. Woolcott was clearly an expert sneaker herself.

  “I cleaned out the back room of the library for it,” Mrs. Woolcott continued, “or she never would have come upstairs.”

  Allegra walked over to a new-looking crate, which sat on a platform connected to the ceiling by heavy chains. Craning her neck, she could make out a thin slit of daylight through an iron door in the ceiling.

  “It’s a trapdoor, and an elevator; it opens in the side garden. The crate contains Mr., er, Peebs’s gift to Ada. A steam engine, for a new balloon, I believe. I daresay she’s been in no condition to think about that project.”

  Allegra continued to poke about the laboratory in awe. It spanned the entire footprint of the Marylebone house, and beyond. There was a pile of crates in a far, unlit corner and a hint of an archway in stone behind.

  “Are those…tunnels?”

&nb
sp; Mrs. Woolcott stood patiently in the eerie gaslight.

  “Allegra, it’s time to go.”

  Allegra suddenly felt very small, and very much alone there in the cold stone room. She was reminded of the day she had taken her small bundle of things, some Italian and English money her father had given her long ago, which she had hidden from the other orphans in the convent, and set out in search of this very house. In hopes of a home.

  Mrs. Woolcott extended a gloved hand, and a kindly smile.

  “Dear Allegra. Time for a new adventure.”

  Less than a minute later, holding hands, Mrs. Woolcott and Allegra hurriedly crossed the threshold of the upstairs-kitchen delivery door into the garden of the Byron house in Marylebone, and then passed through the garden gate to the gravel alley and into the vast bustle of London beyond.

  Alone in the library, Jane took stock of her situation.

  She had often imagined herself lounging alone in a stately home such as this, with a bell rope in the corner just like that one over there, with which to summon servants. Tea or cakes or whatever she fancied—with a pull of the rope, it would be brought to her.

  I could pull that rope now, if I wanted, she thought.

  But she had no right to, not really. This was not her home, and these were not her servants. And after the revelations of foul play in their last case—by supposed gentlemen! Well, even though she was only twelve, Jane had glimpsed enough of Society proper to see that entitlement and merit were not as connected as she had first assumed. She could pull that rope, and someone would have to stop whatever they were doing, and climb the long stairs up to the library, just to see what she wanted, and then go back down and fetch it and bring it up again. All because of the pull of a bell rope. She hardly thought it fair, and her heart was heavier for it.

  Jane opened the library door. Her chin high, she walked down the hall, ignoring the servants but casting a glance into Ada’s room as she passed. She saw Mary’s curtsy and an elderly woman, who Jane thought must be the baroness, smile and nod at Mary approvingly.