The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals

by Jordan Stratford

  She had brought nothing with her, but found a cup for the brown sugar and baking soda she needed. The scrape of the heavy sugar jar against the counter was ominous, as was the tick of the spoon against the cup, each sound a little threat, plotting to give her away.

  What would she say if she were caught? Baking muffins? Ada had no recipe for muffins, and had never made any and had no idea how, so any lie would be unconvincing. Ada of course knew the recipe for many other things, but none of them were edible and most were at least slightly dangerous.

  Her pilfered cup full to the brim with what she needed, she retraced her steps up all the way to the hall outside her own bedroom door, wincing at each squeak and groan of the house. She closed her door with a regrettably loud click, but no one seemed to hear.

  Now there was the simple matter of fire. Coals and kindling and matches in the firebox beside the fireplace in her bedroom. She had seen Anna do this a thousand times, or at least been in the room while she did it, though it proved more difficult than Ada expected. There was too much smoke, until she realized the flue was closed and sorted out which way the stubby iron lever went to open the chimney.

  She placed all the ingredients in the pot—sugar, baking soda, and potassium nitrate—giving them a stir with the enormous wrench before placing the whole works on the glowing coals.

  Ada heard the sounds of the house waking up—the waking up was louder now that the house was full of a more appropriate number of servants. When it had been just one butler, one maid, one cook, and one governess, the amount of noise was barely a distraction. But now the house felt more like a ship at sea, with constant scurrying and opening and closing and unfurling and shuffling. She kept an eye on the pot—the trick was to melt the ingredients together, but not actually cook them, and Ada grew increasingly uncertain as to what the difference was, exactly.

  She used a wadded-up shawl as a pot holder and pulled the concoction off the coals to rest on the tiles in front of the fireplace. It gave off a smell that was both sweet and salty at the same time. Perfect.

  Now it was simply a matter of letting the goo cool before—

  The door opened.

  Ada jumped at the surprise, though not as much as Anna, who had brought more coals for the fire, expecting Ada to be asleep.

  “Experiment,” whispered Ada. “Shut the door.”

  “Whatever are you making, Lady Ada?” Anna whispered back.

  “Muffins?” tried Ada.

  Anna looked unconvinced at the pot of brown sludge, with the wrench sticking out of it, so large it nearly toppled the whole thing over.

  “Well, as long as it’s not some sort of bomb,” said Anna nervously.

  Ada looked immediately guilty.

  “Ah,” Anna said.

  Charles had been well pleased to receive a note from Lady Ada, requesting his help with some clandestine observations.

  Sleuth-hounding was how he liked to think of it: a trail dog sniffing to see if the hunter is headed in the right direction. The note had come with two silver shillings—certainly more than a day’s wages, although he’d have to give one to the foreman in exchange for the day off work.

  He was shooed out of his morning carriage by a pair of spinsters horrified to find him reading inside, so he had walked the mile to the boot-polish factory and its wax-and-sulfur smell that he never entirely got out of his hair or clothes.

  A little girl tried to sell him an apple, and he took in how tired she looked, like she’d been up all night. Unfortunately, he hadn’t the pennies to spare, and the shilling was too great a thing to part with. He did smile at her, but when he reached out to pat her head, she bolted backward as though she expected to be struck. This saddened him, and he continued walking, having to step across a sleeping pair of scruffy-looking men on the way.

  “Allo allo allo, wot’s this, then?” asked his foreman, sleeves rolled up past his large, pointy elbows, and dark eyes leering out from under the brim of his cap. “Guttersnipe’s late for work this mornin’.”

  “Actually, sir, I believe I’m a few minutes earl—”

  “Oh, ‘sir’ izzit? Don’t you sir me, boy; I work for a livin’. Now you get your laggard behind inna that there line, boy, or I’ll give you what for and no gullin’.”

  “Actually,” said Charles, presenting the shilling, “I was hoping we could again make our arrangement.”

  The foreman plucked the silver coin from Charles’s hand.

  “Arrangement, now? We’ve no arrangement, boy, ’side from me not boxin’ your ears ’ere at the present moment for your guff! You’re touched in the ’ead if you reckon you’ll be spendin’ the day like some gentleman wiv ’is feet up!”

  “But I have paid you a shilling, which is more than enough to—”

  “I say it’s my shilling, right and proper, for teachin’ you a lesson about puttin’ on airs, my son, my son! Take a lot more than one shilling for me to be turnin’ a blind eye to your slothful ways.”

  Charles steeled himself and locked eyes with the cantankerous foreman. “Two shillings.”

  “ ’Ow’d you get two shillings, then?”

  “Never you mind. Two shillings, and I will be off for the day.”

  “Let’s see it, this shilling of yours.”

  “You’ll find it looks like the one I just gave you,” Charles replied.

  “Oh! ’oo sets a flash o’ merriment wont to set the table on a roar, eh? Don’t you get clever wiv me, lad.”

  “Two shillings, in total,” said Charles, handing over the prized second coin.

  “ ’At’s more like it, that is. Now off wiv ya.”

  “Thank you, and I shall see you tomorrow,” said Charles with as much courtesy as he could manage.

  “Oh, I fink not, my boy. Reliable employment is wot I offer, not this comes-as-’e-pleases. We’s partin’ ways, you ’n me, we is.”

  Charles’s stomach tightened. He needed this job, and desperately. Not only to pay his board with Mrs. Roylance, stingy as she was with soup and coal, but also to help his father in debtor’s prison. At fourteen, Charles knew his earnings were all that stood between his family and further ruin.

  “But surely two shillings…” He couldn’t believe what had just happened.

  “Cost of an education, that is. Now be off wiv you, ’fore I ’ave to knock out your ’ampsteads.”

  Still in shock, and lamenting the two shillings lost but not seeing any way of retrieving them, Charles turned away from his former employer. Retracing his steps up the cobbled block, he again crossed the sleeping men, and passed the filthy little girl, still offering her one polished apple. His stomach growled, and the sound alone was enough to send her scurrying this time.

  Ada stowed the now-cooled pot back under her bed and fell into a book, and then another. Eventually, Gran appeared to check in on her, and Charlemagne nearly discovered the pot, the contents of which by this time had set into a stiff brown glue. Mercifully, Dr. Polidori had been called away and was not able to attend to Ada today. Gran withdrew, scooping up her pug and reminding Ada that she was not to get out of bed under any circumstance whatsoever.

  Whatsoever, thought Ada, checking the clock. We’ll see about that.

  Anna entered not long after with a tray for breakfast and the Times. Ada scanned the tray for envelopes and saw none.

  “I was hoping for a reply from Miss Anning,” Ada said irritably.

  “There’s that, and more,” said Anna with a grin. She placed the tray down at the foot of Ada’s bed and turned to the door. Glancing both ways down the hall, she made a beckoning motion, and in walked…

  Anna. Another Anna. Wearing an identical black dress with an identical white apron and an identical white mobcap. Only, beneath the cap were wisps of hair the color of which Ada would recognize anywhere. Oh, and there was the face too, Ada realized.

  “Mary?”

  Mary curtsied and smiled broadly in her maid’s outfit as Anna closed the door.

  “I t
hought this would surprise you,” said Anna.

  “Extraordinary,” said Ada. “How did you get past…”

  “Oh, the house is positively crawling with servants,” said Anna, “and Lady Noel is hiring more by the day. A new face wouldn’t catch notice even if we had the time to look, which we don’t.”

  “And,” said Mary, “we have this.” She pulled an envelope out from her apron. “A letter from Miss Anning.”

  Ada was impatient to read it but tried not to snatch it from Mary’s hand. Anna smiled and withdrew as Mary handed it over.

  The paper was a pale green and, once the seal was broken, was revealed to be stationery from the inn where Miss Anning was staying in London. At the top of the page was a heraldic shield, like a medieval knight’s, and upon it an alder tree in gold. The letter read:

  Dear Lady Byron,

  I must thank you again for your kind offer of assistance.

  You have tried your best; however, I am afraid I find your plans as outlined insufficient—in fact, you may have made things worse, and I am unwilling to cooperate. If you succeed in convincing the Sons of Bavaria they have the wrong dog, how will the right dog ever be restored to me? You may thwart the counterfeiters, and save my reputation, but I care not for either if I lose my dog.

  I now understand why you are referred to as the second cleverest girl in England.

  Very sincerely yours,

  M. Anning

  Ada was flabbergasted. How could Miss Anning, clearly a brilliant mind, not see the genius in Ada’s plan? And who was it who had told Miss Anning that Ada was the second cleverest girl in England? And there was something fishy about the stationery, and perhaps the handwriting, but Ada was too upset to take it in fully.

  “Oh, Ada,” said Mary, “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s a good plan. This makes no sense,” Ada insisted.

  “Well, she is no doubt worried half to death over her poor dog; she may not be making the best of decisions.”

  “It’s the worst of decisions!” protested Ada. “I have a plan. A good one!”

  “What was your plan for getting out of here?” Mary said, hoping to distract Ada. “Your grandmother has servants all the way between the hall and the laboratory, so there’s no getting out that way.”

  “Oh, that. I made a bomb,” said Ada.

  “A what?” Mary gasped.

  “Not a bomb bomb, just a smoke bomb. So they’d think the house was on fire, and everybody would run out, and I could stop the acquisition.”

  “Well,” said Mary, “I was thinking you could just borrow another maid’s costume from Anna and sneak out the servants’ entrance.”

  Ada paused. “Your plan is better.”

  Anna returned with a bundle in brown paper, and within it was a dress and apron for Ada.

  Mary and Anna helped Ada into it, and they could see at once that everything was entirely too big. Ada looked in the glass.

  “I look like a mouse in a dog suit,” said Ada.

  “I can fix that,” Anna said, and fussed around Ada with pins. The result was a bit of a mess. “Well, it will have to do long enough to get you out,” Anna said.

  “I could still pretend the house is on fire,” said Ada.

  “Let’s not resort to that quite yet, shall we?” Mary suggested.

  “Right, here we go,” said Anna. “The coast is clear.”

  Anna, Ada, and Mary left the bedroom and were about to descend the servants’ stairs when a near parade of footmen came up them. Anna sharply turned her back and descended the main staircase, so Ada and Mary followed suit, with Ada lifting the hem of her dress lest she trip and tumble.

  The front door was so close.

  A murmur of footmen came from the parlor, some business among them briefly distracting them from the grand front door of the Marylebone house, the guardianship of which had fallen to one lone individual. One enormously tall, solid, and ever-silent individual.

  Mr. Franklin.

  Anna curtsied, eyes downcast, and spun away from the group back to her duties. Mary and Ada didn’t even try to fool Mr. Franklin. Ada merely looked up at him with pleading eyes, and he opened the door, using his own large frame to block any sight of the departing girls. The door closed, he tugged at the front of his jacket and pulled up his gloves.

  Once outside, the girls continued the charade of errand-maids, with Ada’s hands clutching her overlong dress. She’d never before in her life given a thought to getting dirty, but these weren’t her clothes, and she was doing her best to weave between the muddier of the puddles and the freshest plops of horse poo.

  The girls crossed the road and rounded the corner, and they were free from the row of perfect white houses surrounded moatlike by the grey filth of the street.

  “Plan?” whispered Mary.

  “Book,” answered Ada, producing a small volume from behind her apron. “The Abraham Hanover Guide to the Fraternal Orders, Clubs, and Societies of London, published in 1818.”

  “Would a society from Lyme Regis in Dorset be in there?”

  “Any society from anywhere is also in London. Says so in chapter one,” Ada answered.

  “And the Sons of Bavaria are in there?”

  “They are not. Which means either that they are newer than when this book came out or that they are made-up.”

  “Is Bavaria new?” Mary asked.

  “No, no. It’s allied with Germany. Very old. So if there were a Fraternal Order, Club, or Society of their Sons, you’d think it would be in place before the publication of this book.”

  “So, what do we look for?”

  “Commonalities. Similarities. Adjacencies. Just like in number sets.”

  “I don’t follow, Ada dear,” admitted Mary.

  “There’s a Sons of Bolivia. Also a Sons of Belgravia—we’ll go there first—and a Sons of Bohemia.”

  “Adjacencies, things next to each other,” said Mary, getting it now, at least a little.

  There was a map in Ada’s book. All the locations had been circled by Ada in pencil, and they all lay to the south, and at least a little to the east.

  “These…these aren’t the safest places in the world,” said Mary. “Not for two young girls. We should have brought Mr. Franklin.” Then Mary laughed at the thought.

  “Is that funny?” Ada asked.

  “Well, it’s not terribly…clandestine,” said Mary. “As kindly as we know him to be, he’s something of a monster.”

  “Is he?” asked Ada, who genuinely hadn’t noticed.

  “Ada, he’s eight feet tall. And he never says a word! His main skill seems to be looming and casting oppressive shadows. If one were not familiar with how…how extraordinarily trustworthy he is, one would be rather intimidated indeed. I imagine that’s why your mother left you with him.”

  “Why?” Ada wondered.

  “To keep you safe,” Mary said. “I don’t know if he even has a first name. He seems to have sprouted fully formed from the marble as some kind of sentry.”

  “Adam,” Ada said. “His first name is Adam.”

  “Well-done, Ada. How do you know that?”

  “I’m…I’m not sure,” she said quietly. She paused for a moment as the bells in the parish church tolled the hour. “We should get a carriage,” Ada said. “Charles will be waiting.”

  The rain had quickened, and there seemed little point in exiting the carriage. The first hall was squeezed between rather seedy-looking establishments; and beneath the hastily painted sign, SONS OF BELGRAVIA, and a sloppy cartoon of a coat of arms was a CLOSDE sign on the doorknob.

  A figure, instantly recognizable as Charles, approached, and it seemed to Mary that he was trying his very best to appear cheerful. Charles entered the carriage, courtesies were exchanged, and the trio got on with the business of sleuthing.

  “What goes on in there?” asked Mary.

  “Gentlemen from similar walks of life join these sorts of things for ‘fraternity, kinship, and support,’ as they s
ay,” answered Charles. “Mostly, this seems to involve playing cards and singing songs from wherever they’re from, and loaning money to the widows after the members die.”

  “That hardly sounds sinister,” said Mary.

  “It isn’t. Which either makes it the worst place to find criminals, or the best place to hide them,” Charles said.

  “It’s taxonomy, really,” Ada interjected.

  Mary recalled the lessons of the other morning. “Kingdom, phylum, and whatnot?”

  “Yes,” said Ada. “Big groupings, then littler groupings, until you find the species. In this case, fraternal organizations, fraternal organizations of London, fraternal organizations of London beginning with B and ending with A, fraternal organizations of London beginning with B and ending with A who kidnap people’s dogs and sell counterfeit ichthyosaur bones.”

  “But what if it doesn’t follow? What if the dognappers and counterfeiters aren’t actually a fraternal organization of London beginning with B and ending with A at all?” asked Mary.

  “Then we have them in the wrong taxonomy, and have to start over. Still, on to the next one.” Ada knocked on the roof of her carriage, and it lurched to the next location through a dense silver forest of rain.

  The Sons of Bolivia presented a similar spectacle—a closed hall between two shops, both seeming down on their luck. The Bolivians had a slightly newer flag, in red, gold, and green. Clearly, such places were hired because the rent was cheap, and the Sons of such fraternities were of modest means. The carriage lurched to the Sons of Bohemia hall, and while this one looked older, it was likewise an innocent place of gathering for tired men enduring hard life, finding friendship among their compatriots.

  “So, nothing, then,” said Mary in defeat.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Ada agreed.

  “I’m terribly sorry I have failed to be more useful,” said Charles.