Cold-Blooded Myrtle

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  My heart caught and I bit my lip, scarcely able to nod. I knew there were questions to ask, a murder to Investigate, an even older mystery to unravel, and I was speaking to one of the key witnesses. But, Dear Reader, all I wanted to do in that moment was stand there and let Nora Carmichael talk to me about my mother.

  * a complex sort of musical composition evidently designed to first show off the musician’s nimble fingers (the toccata), followed by a section with at least two separate melodies played simultaneously (the fugue), and resulting in many crashing notes happening all at the same time

  †This beautiful word has come down in the world: Nemesis was the Greek goddess of divine retribution. Nowadays it has a much less lofty meaning, and there was certainly nothing godlike about Miss Shelley.

  11

  Circulus in Probando

  No British Yuletide tradition is more picturesque than Wales’s Mari Lwyd, in which a skeletal horse—bedecked with skull and white sheets—is carried from door to door, while revelers demand entry with a contest of songs. No one has consulted the horse about this pastime.

  —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  When I caught up to Miss Judson again, she was practically arm in arm with Miss Shelley, a disgruntled Mr. Blakeney lagging behind. I had never seen him in a bad temper—and if Miss Shelley had put him in one, it made me dislike her all the more.

  “We must run,” Miss Shelley said. “I have to meet a source.”

  “This late?” Mr. Blakeney frowned at his watch.

  “The news never sleeps,” she said.

  “G’night, Stephen.” Mr. Blakeney shook my hand, and we went our separate ways.

  “I don’t like her,” I said as soon as we were out of earshot. (Or perhaps a bit earlier.)

  “I can’t imagine why. I did make some interesting discoveries about Miss Shelley and Mr. Blakeney,” she added. “Very interesting ones, indeed.”

  I gave her a sour look. “And just what fascinating facts did you uncover?”

  “You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

  And that made me crosser than ever.

  As the museum emptied out, Miss Judson and I lingered, admiring the Saturnalia Chalice. Miss Carmichael had not been exaggerating about unbridled excesses. The figures depicted on the goblet were engaged in all sorts of Inappropriate Behaviors, and I was surprised that the museum hadn’t hung a black cloth over the thing, to protect the Delicate Sensibilities of its visitors.

  Miss Judson did not seem shocked, however. She was now engaged in drawing the goblet, intent on capturing its every detail.*

  “Your mum found this,” she said, when I raised an eyebrow at her unseemly interest. “She held it in her own hands.”

  I didn’t like that much, either. Corrupting the youth of Athens. I knew I was mixing my ancient history, and with a proper, Nanette-approved shudder I abandoned Miss Judson to her Saturnalia revelers and wandered up into the new gallery.

  Inside the brick archway stood a vast diorama I had seen on previous visits to the museum. Rolling green hills covered a platform the size of our dining room table, a winding stone rampart snaking its way across. Grey battlements, turrets, and gatehouses were patrolled by miniature Roman centurions—the brothers-in-arms of Mum’s and Dr. Munjal’s Cohortis Hadriani soldiers. Any English schoolchild would recognize the model immediately: Hadrian’s Wall stretching across northern England, the border between the Civilized Roman Empire to the south, and the wild barbarian tribes to the north.

  And now I recognized something else about it, too. I leaned in to better admire what was so plainly Mr. Leighton’s work. Who else would build such an elaborate miniature model of a beloved landscape, populated by tiny villagers—these in finely woven togas, tunics, and polished armor, and those on the other side, with animal furs and homespun plaids over their painted skin? Gazing at the tiny figures in their scrubby artificial grass and meticulously detailed firepits, I could picture Mum’s lead soldier right here among them—perched as a lookout on that guard tower, or fetching water from that stream.

  No wonder Mrs. Leighton hadn’t wanted to come tonight. She probably couldn’t bear to see another one of her husband’s models defaced by vandals, take the risk that someone had scattered olives and wishing wells across this one, too.

  I heard footsteps approaching, and glanced up to see Miss Carmichael. This was my chance to question her properly. I started to step out from behind Hadrian’s Wall—but she was trailed by Mayor Spence-Hastings. She half-shoved him into an alcove hidden from view.

  Obviously, in the interests of good taste and polite behavior, the proper thing would be to make my presence known—particularly if they intended to engage in some sort of . . . Saturnalian behaviors, right here in public! But instead I froze, concealed behind the vast diorama, as Nora tore through her reticule to wave a folded sheet of paper at the Mayor.

  “Is this your idea of a joke?”

  The Mayor dropped the note like it had bitten him. “I never sent that.”

  “Oh, well, it must have been Olive, then.” Her voice was thick with sarcasm.

  Mayor Spence-Hastings let out a strangled sob. “What are we going to do?” He paced the wide corridor, wringing his hands. His tricorn slipped, and he shoved it back—whereupon it slipped again.

  “Pull yourself together!” Miss Carmichael’s liquid voice was a throaty snarl. “People will notice.”

  “But—she can’t be back—it can’t be her. I thought David took care of her!”

  I clamped my jaw down hard to keep from letting out even the thought of a sound.

  “He did. And then I took care of David. Calm down. Someone is just trying to scare us.”

  “Someone murdered the professor,” he said. “I’m not imagining things. If it wasn’t Olive, who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was that power-hungry, grasping wife of yours. Did you consider that? Or even that wife of his, tired of her humdrum life as a shopkeeper. I’d have killed him ages ago, if he’d resigned me to that fate.”

  Mayor Spence-Hastings did not look as offended as he ought to have, Miss Carmichael having just insulted his wife (and accused her of murder). Or nearly as offended as I felt, on behalf of poor Mrs. Leighton!

  He seemed to be churning ideas around in his head. “Or maybe . . . maybe it was Vikram.”

  Dr. Munjal! How could he say that?

  Miss Carmichael’s pretty face took on a keen look. “Now, there’s an idea. Couldn’t show his face here tonight, I see. Still shirking his obligations. It doesn’t matter. I’m out of here in the morning, and I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot in this frozen little backwater again.” She stretched her long fair neck toward an imaginary sun. “Give me the Valley of the Kings any day of the week.”

  The Mayor grabbed Miss Carmichael’s gloved arms. “You can’t leave me to deal with this alone again. I have the Christmas Ball coming up.”

  “You have the Christmas Ball coming up,” she mocked, shaking him off. “Chin up, Caesar. You’ve got everything you ever wanted. Little Olive can’t hurt us anymore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m expected elsewhere. I’m meeting an admirer.” And with that, she sashayed down the corridor, slinky train trailing behind her like snakeskin.

  I wanted to excavate myself from my tomb beneath Hadrian’s Wall, but Mayor Spence-Hastings wouldn’t leave. He stood in the corridor, shoulders slumped, as my feet started to prickle and I got a cramp in my side. When he finally decided to move along, he came straight for me and the diorama. In an ill-considered moment of panic, I scrunched myself beneath the plinth it stood upon, heart clogging my throat. There was absolutely no defense for what I’d been doing—eavesdropping was bad enough. Eavesdropping on the Mayor, while he and a co-conspirator confessed to a murder plot they’d got away with twenty years before, while another murderer was wandering about loose in the village? That wasn’t questionable at all.

  I wa
s about to be uncovered committing a desperate transgression—but fate intervened, in the form of a glorious and timely apparition in the gallery.

  “Mayor Spence-Hastings! I was looking for Myrtle.”

  The Mayor wiped his eyes and straightened. I heard the rustle of his velvet robes and the clink of his chain of office. “Miss—I, no. I haven’t seen her.”

  But Miss Judson plainly had—she was looking straight at me. I could not tell if I was saved, or if my doom was merely delayed, but for the moment I was suffused with relief. “Oh, dear,” she said flatly. “She could be any­where. You know how young girls like to run off.”

  Was that a dig? And at me—or Olive Blackwell?

  Sometimes with Miss Judson, it’s impossible to tell.

  “Well, she can’t be far. Let’s check the Africa Rooms. My daughter used to love the cheetah.”† The Mayor seemed relieved to have a problem he could solve, a constituent whose immediate crisis he could smooth over. As they strolled away, I unpeeled myself from my cramped corner and tried to shake some feeling back into my limbs.

  I nearly stepped on my next clue. Nearly invisible against the creamy marble flooring was the paper Miss Carmichael had thrust at the Mayor. I picked it up—and was almost not surprised to see what was written on its surface, or the fat, blotchy handwriting.

  Quæstio repetundarum

  We exited the museum onto a scene of Christmassy Wonder. Everyone else had long departed, and the streets were empty, already covered in a flat soft sheet of white. Thick flurries of snow obscured our vision, soaking our clothes in moments.

  “We’ll have to hurry to make the tram.”

  One step onto the pavement, and it was clear that we wouldn’t reach the tram stand—if the trains were even running. Miss Judson’s leg skidded dramatically, showing an unladylike flash of petticoat and stocking, and she fetched herself upright by a last-minute snatch at the lamppost. I grabbed her other arm so she wouldn’t slip again, although I wanted to applaud. We regarded each other in consternation.

  “Perhaps someone at the museum could call for a cab?” Not that there were any about; this weather was no friendlier to horses than humans. “Or maybe we could reach Father’s club?”

  Miss Judson came up with a much worse alternative. “No, we shall avail ourselves of Family Hospitality. It is nearly Christmas; she cannot in good conscience turn us away.”

  She couldn’t mean what I suspected.

  “We could stay at the museum. There’s a Tudor bedstead in the upper gallery.”

  Miss Judson smothered a laugh. “Come along.”

  I clung to the iron railing of the depressing museum stairs. “This doorway looks snug,” I proposed. “Look—our capes are warm and nearly waterproof. The brickwork makes a windbreak, and it’s practically dry inside. There must be a cab along by morning.”

  She held me in a long, sarcastic gaze, as I tried to sell her on my campsite.

  “I have half a mind to take you up on that,” she said, “if only because it would be instructive in the matter of Christian charity to the less fortunate. But I don’t fancy losing my post because I let the daughter of Swinburne’s Prosecuting Solicitor freeze to death in a doorway this close to Christmas.”

  “How about criminal negligence or reckless en­dan­germent?”

  “Exactly why I mean to get you inside posthaste. Move along. She’s only the next circle over.”

  “I mean, for letting the daughter of the Prosecuting Solicitor commit—” I fumbled for a word that did not yet exist.‡ “Amitacide. Auntricide. Some kind of homicide, anyway.”

  “Don’t be silly. You spent an entire week in Aunt Helena’s company two months ago.”§

  Indifferent to my pleas, my threats, and my whining, Miss Judson set off for the second time that week to my great-aunt Helena’s house, just as a blast of wind swooped round the corner, carrying with it another armload of snow and flinging it right in our faces.

  Aunt Helena’s house was distressingly close, but the walk in the worsening conditions seemed to take hours. Miss Judson mushed me onward like a dogsled driver, and I wondered if the Royal Geographic Society might find a use for her on one of its proposed Antarctic expeditions. The blizzard carried an eerie half-light of its own, and by the time we dragged ourselves up the stone steps of Aunt Helena’s town house, frosted as sugarplums, the snow was ankle deep, and we were soaked and silent.

  I vaguely recalled that the Mayor’s Mansion House was one of her neighbors—just across the circle—but I’d had as much of the Spence-Hastingses as I needed for one night.

  Aunt Helena had a terrifying housekeeper called Dawes. She was stiff and upright, and looked with disapproval upon pets, children, foreigners, or anyone who was not sufficiently English (or sufficiently Aunt Helena) for her taste. If only Peony had been here, our disgrace would have been complete.

  Dawes’s unwelcoming form materialized silently in the doorway, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. “The Mistress is Out,” she intoned, in a voice like teeth grinding.

  Miss Judson just breezed us both right past her, into the cluttered and cavernous foyer. “It’s snowing,” she said cheerfully. “Myrtle will take the green guest room, and I assume the attic is still available?”

  “You can’t sleep in the attic!” I exclaimed, indignant that she would consider it a possibility, and glaring at Dawes for somehow putting the idea in her head.

  They ignored me, facing each other down like two rams preparing to knock each other off a mountaintop. “Myrtle will need a hot bath drawn right away.”

  “The Mistress gave no instructions.”

  At that moment, it seemed the blizzard outside really might be less chilly and unwelcoming than Aunt Helena’s house, but Miss Judson is a natural phenomenon of her own. Within thirty minutes I was tucked snugly in Aunt Helena’s dignified spare bedroom. I changed into a nightie that was ready on the bed, as if it had been awaiting my arrival—which gave me a twinge of some emotion I could not name. Was Aunt Helena expecting us?

  A knock at my door answered that question. Miss Judson slipped inside, carrying a lamp with a friendly, flickering flame. She wore a quilted dressing gown that was too fine for the servants, but far too small for Aunt Helena, in an Indian print cotton that looked like the sort of thing Aunt Helena would pick out for Miss Judson.

  She stroked its puffy sleeve and piped cuff. “Nice, non? It was in the room next door, along with my brand of hair tonic, a sleeping cap, and a bottle of eau de parfum.” She held out her wrist for me to sniff. “Lily.”

  “I could almost believe Aunt Helena staged this weather to lure us here and hold us captive.” Which sounded like a plot Nanette Munjal would dream up.

  “Nonsense. I think she had great fun on our holiday together, and wants to share in the Family Amusements again. It does tend to be catching, you know.”

  (I remind the reader that Aunt Helena spent the aforementioned holiday in jail.)

  “Perhaps it unhinged her.”

  Miss Judson did not dignify that with a response.

  My aunt had taken things one step further. On the bedside table were notepads and pencils, fully supplied with leads. It would hardly surprise me to find a set of law books or a blackboard concealed behind those green velvet drapes.

  All of which, I grudgingly admitted, made for excellent speculation about the case. “Get in bed,” Miss Judson commanded, perching beside me so we could commence. “I certainly hope you have something to show for your skulking about after the Mayor tonight.”

  “I wasn’t skulking! I was already there when they came in, and they started arguing before I could leave.” Could I help it if they’d gone on to confess to murder—or almost, anyway—while I was on hand? I called that luck, Dear Reader.

  Miss Judson regarded me sternly. “You had several choices in that situation, yet you elected to hide beneath a table. I believe that is the very dictionary definition of skulking.”
/>
  I was the dictionary definition of something just then. “Isn’t that why we went there tonight? To learn who killed Mr. Leighton or pushed Olive Blackwell out of a tower?”

  She crossed her arms. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me you discovered both of those things.”

  “Yes! Well, maybe. Look.” I produced the folded note I’d found at the museum. “This is just like the one Dr. Munjal had! And there’s more.” I recounted the conversation I’d overheard between the Mayor and Miss Carmichael. “Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”

  “So, according to Miss Carmichael, her brother killed Miss Blackwell—and then Miss Carmichael killed her own brother?” Her lip twisted in distaste. “I hate to say anything against your mother, but I’m beginning to question her taste in friends.”

  So was I. Miss Carmichael had been so cool about everything, detached and bored. It was all too possible to picture her pushing Olive Blackwell out a tower window or slicing through her brother’s ropes. She’d admitted to being ambitious—and she’d have to be fearless, maybe even ruthless, to turn her back on the life of a Young Lady of Quality to go adventuring as an Egyptologist, poking among the dead. Perhaps murder would come just as easily.

  “But neither of them admitted to killing Mr. Leighton,” I conceded. “And Miss Carmichael seemed genuinely fond of him.” Miss Judson kindly did not point out that they must have seemed genuinely fond of Olive, too, in order to lure her up into the Campanile. “Mr. Spence-Hastings believes the rumors about Olive coming back from the dead.”

  “Then he didn’t kill her,” Miss Judson mused. “Presumably. Or he didn’t do a particularly thorough job.”

  “Miss!”

  She held up a hand. “Let’s think through this. They only alluded to killing Olive, right?”

  I nodded. “They said David Carmichael ‘took care of her.’ ”