Cold-Blooded Myrtle

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  It didn’t sound funny, and Mr. Blakeney only seemed sad.

  “We’ll find her,” I vowed—although it sounded as hollow and chilling as the Campanile bells. “Where could she be? After, erm—kicking the hornet’s nest? Did the hornets get her?” Had she gone after Olive, only to— I couldn’t finish that thought.

  A cloud flitted over Mr. Blakeney’s face, but he shook it away. “Genie?” he said heartily. “Hardly. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s having a laugh.”

  I eyed him sidelong. He sounded sure.

  The snow was growing thicker and wetter, slick over the cold pavement and brick streets. Heads bent against the wind, we sped the rest of the way to the Mayor’s house.

  We rounded the corner right into a crush of delivery wagons and carriages and servants making last-minute adjustments to the decorations—greenery and flocked ribbons and shiny silver bells bedecked every surface of the Mansion House. The poor building looked ashamed of itself, showing off before its stately, well-behaved neighbors.

  Mr. Blakeney and I clattered through a pair of maids fruitlessly brushing fresh snow from the stairs, who stopped and bobbed to us. Mr. Blakeney gave the brass knocker several furious raps.

  The door swung open, revealing LaRue Spence-Hastings in a red velvet ball gown—bare shouldered, hair half up and cascading down her neck in holly-hung curls.

  “You’re not supposed to be here until the dancing starts.”

  “I don’t care about your stupid party. The killer is going after your father next.”

  She stepped back, arms folded across her chest, crushing the swags on her dress. “You’re just trying to scare me. We saw them arrest the killer last week.”

  “I’m afraid she’s right, Miss—” I didn’t give Mr. Blakeney time to finish.

  “Yes, I’m trying to scare you! The killer is trying to scare you. She’s already struck twice. First Socrates, then Cleopatra—and now Caesar!”

  “You’re delirious.” LaRue started to shut the door in our faces.

  “And you’re a stupid, stuck-up cow!” Agreed, Dear Reader. That might not have been my crowning achievement in persuasive rhetoric.

  Fortunately, we’d drawn attention. Faces appeared in the hallway behind LaRue—I spotted Mrs. Spence-Hastings, dressed as a sort of Snow Queen, in glittering white and silver, and a couple of anxious servants.

  “Here, now, what’s all this? LaRue, darling, you shouldn’t be answering the door; that’s the butler’s—Oh.” Mayor Spence-Hastings found his way to the threshold. “Dear me, it’s young Miss Hardcastle, isn’t it? And who are you?”

  “Blakeney, Mr. Mayor.”

  “You two look like you’ve had a fright. Best come in and get warm.”

  “Father!” LaRue screeched.

  “Henry!” echoed her mother.

  “Mr. Mayor, you need police protection, and you should probably call off the ball.”

  “Impossible! Deerborn, send them away before our guests see them.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Eva.” Mayor Spence-Hastings stepped out onto the stoop, getting snow on his freshly waxed floor, and his freshly shined shoes, and drew us inside.

  I was temporarily overpowered by the attack of Christmas from all sides. The greenery outside was only a starter course, and if there was a pine forest anywhere in England that had not been sacrificed utterly for this affair, it should surprise me greatly. The evergreen scent was suffocating, and Mr. Blakeney had to duck beneath a branch to get inside, dislodging at least one pine cone. At least before Olive could reach Mayor Spence-Hastings, she’d have to risk being smothered or stabbed or buried with a stake of holly through her heart.

  “Now, you’d better start from the beginning.”

  I bit my lip and looked at the crowd of spectators. “You might not want anyone else to hear this, sir.”

  “We’re not going anywhere.” Mrs. Spence-Hastings glared at me. “Whatever you have to report, do so immediately.”

  “Eva, please. Take LaRue and make sure that the musicians know the menu.”

  That directive made no sense, and in his distraction the Mayor didn’t seem to realize it—but his wife certainly realized she was being dismissed. She and LaRue turned and marched out, like a pair of ruffled turtledoves. The Mayor led us into a side room heavy with the scent of old fires and stuffy chairs.

  “Please, tell me what’s happening.” He seemed anxious, face drawn and damp. I looked to Mr. Blakeney for support.

  “Sir, there’s been another scene in Leighton’s display window. The assassination of Julius Caesar.”

  The Mayor—pale already—went downright ashen. “Et tu, Brute?” The words were barely a whisper.

  It was so hot in here I felt feverish, my previously frozen skin prickling. “You know,” I whispered. “You know who’s killing everyone!”

  “Shh! No, not really. It’s impossible . . .” His color­less eyes darted nervously about the room, and I almost felt sorry for him. He really did look like all he wanted to do was escape from everything—from the killer, from the post as Mayor, from his wife and daughter, and from his past. He unfastened his robes and slumped into the armchair. “It’s some dreadful person, playing a horrible prank.”

  “Murder isn’t a prank.”

  “No, no, of course not,” he said. “I mean, pretending to be Olive. She’s been gone for twenty years now. She must be dead. She must be!”

  “Perhaps you should tell us what you know, sir.” Mr. Blakeney had stationed himself before the great door. I was not certain his lanky frame would be enough protection against the killer, if it came to that, but I was glad to have him at our backs.

  “Why is Olive Blackwell after you?” I pressed. “Because of the Saturnalia Chalice? We know it was a forgery.”

  He glanced up sharply.

  “We saw your signature,” I said. “From Hadrian’s Guard.”

  “Ah. This whole sorry business has gone too far.”

  “Olive threatened to expose you.”

  The Mayor nodded. “She’d already written to the board of governors. They would take her seriously—her father was a respected faculty member.”

  “So you had to get rid of her?” said Mr. Blakeney.

  “It was Nora’s idea,” the Mayor said. “But we were all to blame. We just wanted to scare her—let her know the Cohortis weren’t to be trifled with, that she’d have to defy all of us if she went forward with her accusations.”

  “How did you get her up to the tower?” Mr. Blakeney was asking all the sensible questions this afternoon.

  “Told her we’d make her a full member, privy to all the secrets and privileges of membership in the Guard. It really was the key to success in those days, you know. Guard members went on to great careers. My own father—” He cut short his reminiscence with a shake of his head. “We thought we could bribe her, appeal to her loyalty.”

  “So what happened?”

  He stared into the fireplace, face sweaty.

  “Mr. Mayor, you have to tell us,” I said. He wasn’t under any legal obligation to make a confession to the Prosecuting Solicitor’s daughter and an out-of-work legal clerk, but I was hoping to appeal to his decency. And his long-simmering guilt. He must have wanted to unload these crimes to someone.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “And that is the God’s honest truth. We put the blindfold on her, we were chanting, and then—she was gone. I—I always thought Nora must have pushed her, somehow. But where did she go? When we didn’t find her body, I didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared.”

  Mr. Blakeney appealed to my sense of decency. “You’d better tell him, Stephen.”

  The Mayor’s head jerked up. “Tell me what?”

  “We think Olive escaped. Through the steam tunnels.”

  For a moment he looked wildly relieved—but a shadow crumpled his features. “Oh, heavens. It’s really true, then—she’s coming for me?”

&nbs
p; Mr. Blakeney nodded. “It appears so, sir.”

  “All right, let’s think this through.” The Mayor rose, patting his thinning hair with a nervous hand. He looked older than the rest of them, I realized; tired and worn down and ready for this all to be over. Although not, I supposed, with his murder. “We’re safe for now.”

  “She can get anywhere,” I said. “She’s been using the tunnels under the town. There’s a hatch inside Leighton’s for some kind of pneumatic tube—”

  “Pneumatic tube, you say? Of course! Oh, clever girl.” His mouth twisted in an expression that was half smile, half grimace. I didn’t think he meant me.

  “You know about it?” Mr. Blakeney seemed surprised.

  “Know about them? Why, I designed them!” He managed a small laugh. “Thought I’d be one of the great engineers of the age. I convinced my father to invest in a trial system for a pneumatic railway of sorts—a way to deliver not just messages, but parcels. In fact,” he said thoughtfully, “the line terminates in this very house. Father’s business partner lived here then. Thought it was a good idea. It never did quite work, however. Couldn’t get the pressure right; the seals kept breaking. Pity.”

  “That’s how she’s going to get in!” I cried, but the Mayor was shaking his head.

  “Impossible,” he said. “It’s too small. The aperture here would never fit an adult. She’d have to find another way in. And we’re surrounded by constables now, thanks to you.”

  Indeed, we’d heard the clanging of the bells on the police wagons as they approached.

  “That must be Father!” I said with relief.

  A clattering of hoofbeats and the eerie jingle of sleigh bells cut through the falling twilight. At the same moment an obsequious butler rapped on the study door. “The guests are arriving, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Ah, thank you, Deerborn.” Turning to me, Mr. Spence-Hastings said, “It seems our time has run out.”

  “You can’t mean to go out there,” I said.

  He shrugged on his Mayoral robes. “What choice do I have?”

  Wildly, I groped for ideas. “Someone else can wear the robes—Mr. Blakeney! Smuggle you out in disguise!”

  “Stephen?”

  The Mayor looked sad and amused at the same time. “Something out of a penny dreadful,* I’d say. No, I can’t put anyone else in danger.” He clapped Mr. Blakeney’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t want our killer to mistake someone else for me.”

  I was touched, and surprised. “That’s quite noble of you.” I doubted very much LaRue or Mrs. Spence-Hastings would be as selfless.

  “Not at all,” he said, drawing himself up stoutly. “There are a number of police constables and officials here tonight; I am in their capable hands, and Miss Blackwell—if indeed that is who she is—will not strike tonight.”

  “But—” I was torn with indecision.

  “I would like you to do something for me, if you will. Please get LaRue to safety.”

  I groaned inwardly, but when I was a police Investigator, I would have to take disagreeable assignments all the time. I stood up smartly at attention. “Of course, Mr. Mayor. But where can we go?” Outside, the snow was falling thicker than ever. Soon it would be too dark and treacherous to leave on foot without risk of freezing, and the street was too crowded to get away by carriage.

  The Mayor had come to the same conclusion. He sized me up with one careful look—and, Dear Reader, that turned out to be exactly the right expression. It seemed that Henry Fairbush Spence-Hastings still had some radical engineering ideas bouncing around in that balding head.

  “An adult won’t fit in the pneumatic tunnel,” he said. “But you would.”

  * Billy Garrett No. 4: The Counterfeit Queen

  24

  Un Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle

  Should you find yourself short on gift ideas, the following items are appreciated by nearly everyone: Camera equipment, books (the thicker the better), a subscription to The Strand, a typewriter, fountain pens, fine writing paper, anatomical models, or a telephone. Biscuits and chocolate are also acceptable. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  Dear Reader, I shall spare you the whining and protestations set forth by LaRue Spence-Hastings in the wake of her father’s suggestion that she not only miss the greatest social triumph in her family’s history, but that she do so in the company of Morbid Myrtle Hardcastle, and on such an inconceivable expedition as crawling through a tiny subterranean passageway.

  We had gathered in the already crowded kitchens, where the bustling staff (including Cook) stopped to regard us with no little surprise. The hatch for the pneumatic tube was in the butler’s pantry, a brass-bound circular window like a ship’s porthole. It was much smaller than the passageway we’d seen at Leighton’s. The killer would have to find another way in. The pneumatic tube was not the Mansion House’s only Technological Marvel: I also Observed an array of household signal bells and the speakers for an internal message service. It was so unfair that LaRue should live here; she had no appreciation for the devices’ mechanics.

  The Look she was giving her father and me now made it plain that her resentment for them would last a lifetime. I hesitated, hoping another alternative would present itself.

  Mr. Blakeney seemed to be thinking the same. “Are you sure, sir? This all seems a bit drastic.”

  “Nonsense, it’s perfectly safe. This line goes due west to the Town Hall. Just a hop, skip, and a jump from the police station.”

  I glanced at Mr. Blakeney—neither of us wished to note that the death of Caesar had been staged on the steps of the model Town Hall. I could only hope the lack of a figure representing Julia Caesaria meant that LaRue was not among Olive’s targets. There was no telling how far her revenge would spread.

  Mrs. Spence-Hastings was livid. “Really, Henry, this is too much!” she fumed. “We have guests—the Bishop is here from Upton! And you’re sending our daughter into the sewer? Have you lost your mind?”

  He squeezed her by the shoulders. “I am, and I have not. I’m thinking more clearly now than I have in some time. If I thought you’d fit, I’d shove you down there as well. I’ve explained the situation. These girls have pluck, and they’ll be quite safe. Unless you’d rather they toddle off in a snowstorm?”

  “I’d rather you come to your senses!” She might have convinced him, if at that moment their argument had not been upstaged by a disturbance from the kitchens.

  Frantic banging shook the back door, so loud we could hear it in the next room. Mrs. Spence-Hastings let out a ladylike little scream, and the Mayor bundled LaRue to his chest. She didn’t even object. Cook bustled to the door—but it flew open in her face, and a white-faced figure plunged inside, snowy wind blowing all around.

  “I—I saw her!” gasped the young woman, fair hair piled atop her head, eyes wide as dinner plates. Leah Blackwell hugged a battered music case to the breast of her long blue cloak. “My sister—it’s her. It’s really her. Olive.”

  Cook slammed the door soundly, bracing herself against it like she’d been hired for extra security, and Mr. Blakeney helped Leah to a chair. “It’s all right, Miss. The police are on their way.”

  She nodded faintly, still trembling.

  The Mayor stood by the portal, gripping the doorframe to the butler’s pantry. What little color he’d had drained from his face, and his red robes stood out stark and gruesome. “She’s here?” He shook himself. “She’s here. Miss Hardcastle, please. Go now. Take LaRue. LaRue, don’t argue. I could not bear it if something happened to you because of me.”

  “But—” She faltered, but something in her father’s expression seemed to communicate our urgency. She reached into a cabinet and withdrew two bull’s-eye lanterns and lit them. “Don’t drop yours,” she snapped, and climbed headfirst—red velvet gown and all—into the iron tunnel.

  With a gulp and a silent apology to Miss Judson, I followed.

  Dear Reader, the thrill of
crawling through a pneumatic parcel tube is short-lived. Perhaps it was the company, but we had barely made it ten feet before LaRue’s complaints had worn thin.

  “Where’s your taste for adventure?” I muttered—and I’m not sure who I was talking to.

  The passageway was dark, freezing, narrow, and surprisingly smooth—I supposed it would have to be, to carry parcels swiftly along a gust of air. The Mayor had been correct: no full-grown human could have squeezed through. There was barely room for LaRue’s dress.

  “This . . . gown . . . cost . . . fifteen . . . guineas,” she grunted. “I . . . will . . . bill* . . . you.” But she gripped her lamp and crawled, one-handed, steadily forward. I could see nothing but her backside and heels, and the waver of her lamp, like the tail of a glowworm. Mine bit into my fingers as I inched along, wriggling down ironworks that hadn’t seen the light of day in—well, ever.

  “How far is it?” LaRue called back. The close surroundings swallowed up her voice, giving it back in a muffled hush.

  A hop and a skip? Had we gone a full jump yet? “Not far now. Just keep going.”

  “How will we know when we’re there?”

  I didn’t answer, but LaRue kept talking. “What if we get lost? Or suffocate?”

  Asphyxiate, I corrected silently—we’d die breathing our own carbon dioxide. For all the difference it would make.

  “We won’t.” Although she raised excellent points I myself was trying not to consider. “Your father said the tunnel goes straight there.”

  “Why is this even here?” she wailed. “Why is this happening to me?”

  Because your father participated in a dastardly crime in college and has been covering it up for twenty years and his victim is back for revenge. I credit the exertion of crawling and holding the lamp and trying not to burn myself, and of being grateful that I could not strangle LaRue from my current position, for not saying that aloud.