Acceptance. That’s what she saw. Jane felt as though she were carved from wood.
She made her way down the stairs to the foyer, where Mr. Franklin stood and watched her descend. Over his arm were her cape and bonnet and gloves, all of which looked suddenly plain and worn thin, there in the gleaming white hall. She told herself not to cry, and succeeded, at least for the moment.
Mr. Franklin, as impossibly tall and silent as always, helped her with her cape as she buttoned the wrists of her gloves. With a nod and what almost, in certain lights, might resemble a small smile, he opened the front door of the shining Byron house, onto Marylebone Road.
What Jane saw made her breath catch in her throat.
Dolls, or mannequins, she thought at first. But no, people. People painted to look like dolls, round rosy cheeks and all. One man, and one woman. Even from across the broad road, she could see lines drawn around their wrists, around finger joints, as though they had been meticulously assembled.
They had frozen in place upon realizing they’d been spotted, which made the whole scene even more bizarre. Jane simply had no place in her brain in which to put such a sight.
Just then, a monstrous omnibus drove past, and in its trembling wake the mysterious doll figures had completely vanished.
Jane hopped back into the house, her eyes wide, her mouth agape. She looked to her left at Mr. Franklin, who had clearly not caught sight of the strangely painted couple, or if he had, he was unaffected by it. She looked to her right and saw Peebs in the parlor, tucking the last of his papers and books into his leather case, making to leave.
“Peebs?” Jane asked.
Peebs looked up and caught the expression of shock on Jane’s face.
“Are you all right, Miss Jane?” he asked, concerned.
“I just saw…well, I don’t know what I saw. It’s all a bit much, I’m afraid.”
“Certainly many changes are afoot, Miss Jane. But we must persevere, in our way.”
“I confess I cannot see a way through it at all, what with Ada’s mother having returned.”
“Grandmother, actually,” clarified Peebs. “I suspect the baroness is still some weeks away, if ever she should decide to return. However, it is best, I think, if we all give the situation a degree of remove.”
“But we’ve just found a new case! A missing dog, in Dorset.”
“Well, under the watchful gaze of Lady Noel, I do not expect Lady Ada to be allowed out of the house. I fear the unfortunate dog shall have to remain missing.”
Jane was frustrated. “Lady this and Lady that. It’s all right for you. You’re one of them.”
“Miss Jane,” clarified Peebs patiently. “I am one of my own, thank you. And while I certainly understand your frustrations at some aspects of Society—indeed, I share them—we can be of little help to Ada by remaining here. If we are to be of service, and I suspect we shall be needed, then we must adopt a manner more clandestine.”
Jane tried harder not to cry, and it was almost working.
“There, there, Miss Jane. I am certain all will be well. We have faced greater challenges than an obstructive grandmother!”
Jane merely nodded before asking, “Peebs, might I perhaps trouble you for carriage fare home?”
“Certainly, Miss Jane. I shall escort you, if you like.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d rather go alone,” Jane said bravely.
“You know, that’s considered not at all proper,” Peebs said with a slight smile.
“I know,” said Jane.
“I may as well be in Newgate,” said Ada. “Only with leeches.”
“I’m sure it won’t be as bad as all that,” said Mary assuringly.
“Gran won’t let me near a door, let alone through it—you’ll see.”
“We’ve managed to sneak out before. We’ll think of something.”
“Or not,” said Ada.
“Whatever do you mean?” asked Mary.
“I have things to do. Important things.”
“Like the missing dog,” added Mary.
“Yes. No. I mean my things. Important things.” Ada pointed to the jars on the floor. “I have a dirt map to organize. I have the bleh to program with Mr. Babbage. There are books I haven’t read yet. And I have a dozen seamstresses to manage.”
“Seamstresses?” Mary asked.
“I’m just—I don’t know. It’s all gone wrong. Jane knows.”
“Yes, I must admit my sister does not seem quite herself.”
“We broke her, I think,” Ada declared.
The door opened, and it was Anna, Ada’s maid.
“Sorry to intrude, Lady Ada. I just thought you should know that they’ve all gone.”
“My gran and her servants?” Ada asked.
“No. Miss Jane, Miss Allegra, Mrs. Woolcott, and Mr. Peebs.”
“Where did they go?”
“Home for Jane. Home too for Allegra and Mrs. Woolcott; I mean to say, Mrs. Woolcott’s taken Allegra to her home. And I’m not sure as to Mr. Peebs’s whereabouts, only that he has left.”
“Mmm.” Ada pursed her lips sourly.
Anna nodded and stepped backward through the door, closing it.
“That’s that, then,” Ada said after a moment.
“Honestly, Ada, I’m sure that—” Mary began.
“Well, I’m not. It’s impossible. And just as well.”
Even the air between the girls felt hurtful to Mary.
“You can’t just give up like this,” said Mary quietly.
“Can,” replied Ada, her face stiffening.
“I see,” said Mary as calmly as she could manage, which wasn’t very. She rose from Ada’s bed, where she had been perched, and gave a resigned, heartbroken sigh.
“No,” said Ada, quite loudly.
“No what, Ada?”
“No, you don’t just stand up and say you see when you don’t. I get…stuck, sometimes. And you get me unstuck. It’s what you do.”
“So, you want me to unstick you?” asked Mary tentatively.
Ada nodded. “Go on, then.”
“Well, all right. We may be scattered, but we are not lost to each other. And we have a case to attend to. So put your mind to that. I can write to this address in…”
“Lyme Regis, Dorset.”
“Yes, and inquire about the missing dog.”
“London to Dorset, one hundred fifty-four miles.”
“Really? You are a marvel, Ada,” acknowledged Mary.
“I like maps. They stay put,” said Ada. “Anyway, that’s three days there, three days back by post. And another two days for the carriage. So we shall expect Miss Mary Anning of the missing-terrier case to arrive a week from tomorrow.” Ada handed Mary the letter, which Ada had tucked under her pillow.
“However shall we get her into the house?” Mary wondered.
“It would certainly help if there was a secret elevator from the street through the side garden that descended into some sort of underground catacomb that Gran doesn’t know about.”
Mary scanned her friend’s expression to see if there was any clue she was joking.
There was none.
December sent a calling card in the form of an icy blob of rain down the back of Allegra’s neck, but the girl did not care at all. In fact, she was blissfully happy.
Happy to have received Ada’s message, after a week, instructing her to return discreetly to Marylebone and help with the case. Happy that Mrs. Woolcott and her husband, Cecil, were trying to make a home for her in their modest flat. Happy even to just be outside, in the rain.
Her happiness was jolted when she spotted something across the street from the Byron house as comical as it was disturbing. Two clowns (she supposed) in white powder, with perfectly round red circles on their cheeks. Not clowns, she thought. Dolls. Puppets?
Little lines ran around their visible joints, including an uncomfortable-looking one under the jaw. As if their heads might pop off any minute.
&
nbsp; She was distracted by the arrival of a carriage and a youngish-not-oldish woman with rather a great deal of luggage. She was insisting “gently, please, gently” as the coachman handed it down.
Miss Mary Anning, of Lyme Regis, Dorset. Had to be. And with her arrival, the disappearance of the curious doll couple.
Allegra glanced at the still-closed door of the Marylebone house, stepped behind a crisply rectangular hedge, and whistled. It was a rather extraordinary whistle, produced with two fingers in the little girl’s mouth, and it made the horses snap their ears up. Fortunately, the whistle also gained the attention of Miss Anning’s ears, and the ears turned her entire face in Allegra’s direction.
Allegra beckoned, and Miss Anning hoisted her various bags and trundled over. Allegra put a finger to her lips in the universal sign for “shhhh” and then pointed to a long black rectangle in the ground at her feet, there in the side garden. Allegra knelt down to rap on the black metal door. Five times.
With a squeak, the steel door split at the middle and opened upward. There was a series of ticks, followed by a rattle of chains, as a rough wooden platform slowly rose up out of the dark, eventually coming level with the grass.
“This way,” whispered Allegra as she stepped onto the platform. Miss Anning nodded, stacked her luggage carefully on the platform, and stepped on herself. Allegra did a little hop-step, which reverberated across the wooden deck, and the clicking and rattling resumed, this time carrying the passengers down into inky blackness. The rain continued to write little “how-do-you-dos” on Allegra, who really should have remembered to wear a hat.
Miss Anning could see she was in a vaulted stone room, lit only by gaslights. The room held long, stout wooden tables and piles of tools and metallic things she could not immediately identify. And sitting at one of these tables were two young girls.
“Jane?” Allegra asked. Mary shook her head sadly.
“I suppose you’re wondering,” Ada began, as she had rehearsed, “why we are meeting underground.”
“Not really, to be honest,” Miss Anning replied. “Since little Tray disappeared, I’ve had all sorts of unusual meetings.” Ada concealed her disappointment. Nobody ever wondered anything.
“Please, do have a seat, Miss Anning,” said Mary, rising, but not figuring out an easy way around the long table. “Oh, it is Miss Anning, I presume?”
“Miss Mary Anning, at your service,” the woman said, with a small curtsy. There were no chairs to speak of, but she managed with a wooden stool easily enough.
Miss Anning had an oval face and a soft chin. Her sharp brown eyes sparkled with intelligence, and her nose, while prominent, was long and noble. It was a serious yet kindly face, beneath a very practical straw hat, which Ada decided would be ideal for fossil hunting.
“I’m Mary Godwin,” said Mary. “And this is of course Lady Ada Byron, and I see you have already met her half sister, Allegra.”
Allegra ignored the introductions and was poking at the stacks of luggage, though it was too dim to discern much from them.
“Do you know a Nora Radel?” Ada asked out of nowhere. The question had been a wasp in the jar of Ada’s brain, and she needed to let it out.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Miss Anning. “Should I?”
“Unusual meetings, you were saying,” resumed Ada.
“Well, yes, as I said, ever since my poor dog went missing.”
“Missing?” asked Ada. “Or dead?”
“Ada!” exclaimed Mary. “That’s a horrid thing to say!”
“No,” interjected Miss Anning. “It is certainly what I thought at first.”
“The landslide,” said Ada.
“What landslide?” asked Allegra. “Nobody said anything about a landslide.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mary, “we might begin at the beginning.”
“Very well,” agreed Miss Anning. “As you may know, my family business consists of collecting and selling certain natural antiquities.”
“What’s natural antiquities?” asked Allegra. Ada shot daggers at her with a look, but Allegra wrinkled her nose and deflected the imaginary daggers with imaginary steel gauntlets.
“Very old specimens of once-living things,” answered Miss Anning helpfully.
“So, dead things,” said Allegra.
“Very dead, yes. Very long-dead things. My home in Dorset has the proper geology and weather to expose the remains of animals who have been dead for thousands of thousands of years.”
“How can there be thousands of thousands?” Allegra asked.
Ada, if she’d had the energy, would have leapt over the table to throttle her sister. She settled for another deadly stare.
“That is a very reasonable question, Miss Allegra,” said Miss Anning. “Tell me, how long does it take you to count to one hundred?”
“Twenty-four seconds,” said Ada precisely.
“Indeed, Lady Ada, an impressive yet reasonable sum. Therefore, counting aloud to one thousand, without stopping, would consume approximately four minutes’ time.”
Allegra shrugged.
“Ah, but if you were to count out loud to a thousand thousand,” continued Miss Anning, “which we call a million, it would take you more than two days solid.”
“Two days of counting! What if you were thirsty, or had to go to the bathroom, or got bored?” Allegra asked.
“Then either it would take you longer or you would have to have a friend take over,” Miss Anning explained. “Of course, I understand that Lady Ada’s contraption can count rather a great deal quicker than that.”
Ada nodded, pleased.
“Four hours, twenty-seven minutes,” said Ada. “But it’ll throw a spindle. Best to do it by tens, anyway. Or hundreds. Faster.”
“No doubt, Lady Ada. However, to answer your question, Miss Allegra, where my family lives it is quite common to find the bones or even entire skeletons of these ancient animals, thousands of thousands of years old, some of which are very large indeed. We locate, extract, classify, and find scientific homes for these materials, these very old animal bones, so that they may be studied and tell us more about the world as it once was.”
“Like this,” said Ada. She slid forward a modest-sized framed engraving. In the picture, giant palm trees graced the land, while monstrous animals that resembled fish and crocodiles swam the seas and lined the shore, while giant bat creatures flew overhead.
“Yes, this is a drawing by a friend of mine, Mr. De la Beche. It shows the animals native to Dorset during the Jurassic Period, some millions of years ago.”
“Days of counting without sleeping or having to pee,” said Allegra.
“As you say,” said Miss Anning. “And rather more than that.”
“Gosh” was all Mary could say.
Allegra pointed to the print. “So, these sea monsters ate your dog?”
“No, Miss Allegra. Tray—my little dog—and I were exploring a cliff face, which seasonally erodes to reveal some extraordinary specimens, but there was—”
“A landslide. It was in the Times,” said Ada.
“Aha!” exclaimed Mary. Now she finally understood why Ada had taken such a seemingly mundane case as a missing dog, and one so far from London.
“A landslide, yes. I nearly fell to my death. And, in the aftermath, I was unable to find—”
“Your dog, Tray, the terrier,” said Allegra. “See? I was listening.”
“Very good, yes,” continued Miss Anning. “And so I assumed the worst.”
“But the dog isn’t dead,” said Ada.
“Well,” said Miss Anning. “Immediately upon arriving home, and distraught from my fruitless search…”
“Should have brought an apple,” laughed Allegra, inappropriately. Ada fired her a look, which put a stopper in the outburst.
“…I discovered a note,” continued Miss Anning. “Here.” And from her jacket pocket she produced a folded piece of brown paper, sliding it along the wooden workbench to Ada, who picked
it up and sniffed it deeply.
“Fishy?” asked Mary.
“A little,” Ada answered. “Different, though. Beefy.”
“It’s butcher paper,” said Miss Anning. “Common enough in Dorset, as it’s waterproof. We use it to line shelves, patch roof holes. It’s quite useful.”
“Common doesn’t help us. We need uncommon.” Ada unfolded the paper and at once understood the beefy smell.
Glue.
Each letter in the note had been clipped from a newspaper and glued onto the waxy brown butcher paper.
It read:
“And where did you find this note?” asked Ada.
“It was on my kitchen table, when I arrived home,” Miss Anning explained.
“No sign of forced entry?” asked Ada.
“Lady Ada, I live in Dorset. Our doors do not have locks, for the most part.”
“Ah,” she said.
“And to what does this refer?” asked Mary. “Lot two twenty-one B, Brit Mus?”
“British Museum,” Ada answered. “They’re building a new one—a bigger one—and are currently acquiring artifacts for the new collection. It is the largest construction site in all of Europe. Not far from here, actually; you can hear the hammering from the roof.”
Mary suddenly felt a pang of sadness for her friend. A hot-air balloon tethered to the roof had been Ada’s favorite hideout, but it had been destroyed during their first case. She could tell from the sigh in her voice that Ada must miss it rather dreadfully. Still, she persevered with the matter at hand. “But why would they ask Miss Anning to verify the artifacts?”
“I can guess,” said Ada. “One, because they’re fake, and two, because Miss Anning is clever enough to say so.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Lady Ada,” said Miss Anning politely. “And, yes, I suspect they are indeed fake. The lot has been professionally illustrated, and while I have not examined the specimen itself…”
“Specimen of what?” asked Allegra.
“It purports to be an intact ichthyosaur skeleton. A marine predator of the late Cretaceous Period,” explained Miss Anning.
The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals Page 3
