Cold-Blooded Myrtle

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  I banged backward, alarm choking off my breath.

  “Myrtle, wait!” Her voice was hoarse.

  Against my better judgment, my feet obeyed her. I stood frozen in the passage behind LaRue.

  “What are you doing down here?” I croaked. I tried to take in the scene, though my brain flailed like a frightened rabbit, sending up desperate urges to flee. I’d been right all along. And now we were trapped down here with her.

  “I think she’s hurt. Myrtle, for heaven’s sake, get over here.”

  LaRue shone her light on Genie, who was not lunging for us with a chloroform-soaked rag. Slumped against the curved brick wall, she lifted a hand in a weak wave. The first sensible thing I noticed was that she’d lost her spectacles. And evidently any light she’d brought. It didn’t seem to be a very well planned ambush.

  LaRue crouched beside her. In the flickering lamplight, Genie’s face was drawn and white, her hair a fright, and she had scratches on her hands and chin. She’d taken a bad fall.

  “I think my ankle’s broken.” She coughed, and now I saw the rip in her skirt. “I’ve been here for hours, screaming my head off. I knew you’d come. Or Robbie. Somebody. But somehow, I hoped it would be you.”

  “Why are you here?” I said, still wary.

  “I told you, I came to find out who killed Leighton and Nora. But as usual, nothing quite goes as Genie plans it. Is Robbie all right? I’m afraid we had quite the barney. Is it still Monday?”

  “Tuesday night,” I said. “You’ve been down here since yesterday?”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t freeze,” LaRue said.

  “Did you find any evidence?” I hadn’t decided whether to trust her. She certainly seemed injured in true—but it was just too coincidental, finding her down here. Wasn’t it? But if she’d been here overnight, that meant she’d come down before the Caesar tableau appeared in the Display.

  “I hate to be a bother,” Genie said, “but my ankle really hurts, and I’m dying for a cup of tea. Can we talk about this later?” Face scrunched, she tried to make something out. “You’re the Mayor’s daughter, aren’t you?” She struggled to sit up, letting out a whimpering gasp. “Has something happened? Blast it, I’ve lost my pencil.”

  “You can interview her later,” I said. “We’ll have to send for help.”

  “Nothing doing,” Genie said. “I’m not waiting here another minute. We’re all strapping girls. We can get out of this together.”

  I had finally inched closer, and there was no denying that something was wrong with Genie’s right ankle. She could not be faking the impossible angle at which her toes pointed. The skeleton of Olive Blackwell had not made me squeamish, but my stomach turned at the sight of Genie’s injured foot. I gulped, but came forward. Perhaps we could fashion her a splint from something—the rotted wood from the door to Olive’s burial chamber and the strings to LaRue’s corset?

  Genie was eyeing me stoically. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just need a little help.”

  “We found her,” I said abruptly. “Olive. She’s down here. She died,” I added, softly.

  Genie’s keen expression clouded over, and she crossed herself. “There but for the grace of Myrtle Hardcastle,” she murmured. “An accident?”

  “Murder.” I fished in my satchel for the bracelet.

  Genie squinted at it, holding it close to her face, and sighed. “Nora? It’s almost poetic, then. I want to see her.”

  “You can’t even walk,” I pointed out. “Or see.”

  She held my gaze. “I’ve been searching for Olive Blackwell since I was your age,” she said. “I will crawl there, if I have to.”

  “Wait.” LaRue interrupted us. “If Olive’s not the killer, and you’re not the killer—then who is after my father?”

  Genie and I shared a belated, and at least on her part blurry, look.

  “We’ve eliminated all the suspects,” I said.

  “Or, more to the point, the killer has,” replied Genie. She tried to shift into a more comfortable position. “Oof,” she said. “This stupid thing. I was trying to reach for it when I fell. I never even saw what it was.”

  She was holding out a small, shiny, round object, and I was surprised she hadn’t heard what it was—but she must have squashed it and lost or damaged the clapper. Giving it a little shake, I heard a faint, dull rattle, not a cheery jingle.

  “It’s a bell?” Genie said. “Where did that come from?”

  But I knew. And the force of the realization sent me straight to my feet, nearly banging my head against the low ceiling of Genie’s chamber.

  “Myrtle! What is it?”

  “We have to go. The killer is at your house.”

  LaRue wailed, “You just said she wasn’t!”

  “I was wrong,” I said. “I’ve been wrong all along. It’s not Olive at all. It’s Leah.” The scrap of wool, the bells—both from Leah’s long blue cloak.

  They both just stared at me. “Who’s Leah?” LaRue asked.

  Genie seemed to search her memory. “Wait—the carillon player? She’s—” I watched the pieces come together for her. “Leah Blackwell. The baby sister. How did I miss that?” She gave her forehead a gentle smack. “She’s at the Campanile every day. She knows all about the steam tunnels. She must have gone exploring once, and found her sister’s body.”

  “The candles!” LaRue exclaimed. “Like a shrine.”

  “All this time, she thought Olive had run away.” I could imagine the disappointment—the disillusionment she must have felt when she discovered her hopes so cruelly dashed. Had she realized Olive had been murdered, and not merely met with some mischance? Would that even matter?

  “But—no,” Genie said. “She can’t have done it. She was playing the carillon when Nora was murdered. I was there. I heard her.”

  And, like that, the gears clicked into motion, and the whole program played out before me, in all its splendid, sinister orchestration. “The bells are automated! Like a music box—if Leah could arrange for them to chime the hour automatically, she must have figured out how to set it up to play her Christmas music, too.” I glanced at the tunnel ceiling with a sigh, thinking we’d all be better off if Schofield College produced fewer brilliant engineers.

  “Making us all her alibi,” said Genie. “She’s terribly clever.”

  “She’s after my father!” LaRue cried. “We might already be too late!”

  “Get me up,” Genie commanded. “We’ll find a way out of here. The map’s in my coat pocket. My blue, not-a-murderer’s-coat pocket,” she added with a weak grin.

  LaRue looked like she wanted to kiss Genie. “You have a map,” she said, and it came out a sort of blissful sigh.

  “I came prepared.” LaRue helped Genie to a position where she could reach into her pocket, and out came a folded paper—and a long leather cord holding a brass whistle. “Oh,” she said faintly.

  “Give me that.” I snatched it from her. “Miss Judson warned you what could happen.”

  “Incorrigible,” Genie said. “I told you.”

  “I hate you both,” LaRue said.

  *certainly not the bite of the Egyptian cobra, which causes gastrointestinal distress, blistering, convulsions, paralysis, and tissue necrosis—no matter what Cleopatra may have claimed

  26

  Semper Ferians

  Above all else, Christmas is a time of good cheer. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  There was no rushing Genie, no matter how LaRue complained, cajoled, and exhorted. She was game and hardly protested, but a broken ankle is no trifling thing. We’d recovered her glasses, at least. When we passed the corridor where Olive Blackwell had waited so long for someone to find her, Genie issued a wistful sigh, but gripped LaRue all the harder and nodded her onward.

  A slow, painful progress is not conducive to rational thought. My imagination ran away, down the tunnels and back up to the Mansion House. Was the M
ayor still alive? Was Leah even now innocently playing the pianoforte, waiting for the moment she’d pull a dagger from her music case and slice him to ribbons? If only I hadn’t made that promise to Father, we might have solved the case sooner, and not been duped when sweet frantic Leah burst on the scene, sobbing about her sister. What would we find when we finally emerged from our catacombs? I didn’t dare speculate, but I couldn’t help worrying.

  Genie’s hand on my shoulder tightened, and I bucked up. LaRue, taller than I, had the brunt of Genie’s weight, so I held the light. We had to make frequent stops to navigate and let Genie catch her breath, but eventually we made it back to the cavern under the tramlines.

  “This is where we got lost before,” LaRue pointed out. She shrugged Genie into a more comfortable position, as Genie panted and I studied the map.

  Genie coughed. “I think I hear someone.”

  “Maybe it’s help!” LaRue cried.

  “Maybe it’s the killer,” I said.

  “At this point, I’ll take either one,” replied Genie. “Blow the whistle, Myrtle.”

  With only brief hesitation, I obeyed. It was a proper police whistle, and it pealed out gloriously, reverberating from the bricks and ironworks, bouncing down along the tunnels. I gave it several hearty blasts, and I’ll admit it—by the last couple, it was for pure enjoyment’s sake alone.

  When the last cold high pitch faded away, we heard a distant but very distinct, “No.”

  “Wait,” said Genie. “I’d know that scornful meow anywhere.”

  Peony? “Peony!” In my relief and excitement, I waved the lantern, wreathing us in plumes of smoke.

  “Hulloooooo . . .” A man’s voice echoed down the tunnels, and I tweeted the whistle once again. A return blast answered me. LaRue and Genie cried out, Genie a bit raspily.

  “Help! Hello! We’re down here! She’s hurt!”

  We saw the bobbing of lanterns before we saw our rescuers, but they gradually sorted themselves into a cluster of black-clad constables and a few other figures that weren’t immediately recognizable.

  “Father?” LaRue’s voice was tentative. “Is my father all right?”

  “LaRue?” A small figure broke through the knot to dash down the icy sewer and swing LaRue into a desperate embrace. Mayor Spence-Hastings had lost his red robes but seemed otherwise unharmed.

  “You must help Miss Shelley.” LaRue found a hint of her old imperiousness, and her father waved the policemen over. Genie was propped awkwardly against a curve of tunnel wall, and twining about her injured ankle, bumping her hard black head into it, was Peony. Genie gritted her teeth and made not a sound, although her eyes rolled with agony.

  “Myrtle!”

  I whirled about to see Father and Miss Judson running down the tunnel toward me.

  Father looked much as I’d seen him last, but Miss Judson—where had she come from?

  “What—?” I waved the lantern at her, casting a wide bright glow against a skirt, jacket, and face caked in—what was that? Plaster? Paint? I could not identify the color, let alone the substance . . . s. But I thought I smelled Christmas dinner: beef, custard, brandy, nutmeg. Olfactory hallucinations brought on by shock, clearly. A cherry rolled down her skirt and plopped onto the tunnel floor.

  “You’re not wearing your party dress,” I managed.

  She held up a weary finger—likewise sticky. “Don’t ask.”

  “Where did you come from?” I demanded. “And what about Leah?”

  Father caught me up in an embrace as fierce as the Mayor’s, momentarily silencing all my questions. “That’s my brave girl,” he said.

  I held on until I ran out of breath—then promptly resumed my report. “Leah is the killer! We found her bell—”

  Father’s hands were on my shoulders. “We know.”

  “You know? How?”

  Father held a hand out to Miss Judson, inviting her to take the floor. She sighed. “There must be a more convivial place to have this conversation—”

  “No!” My voice rang, shrill as the whistle. “Tell me now!” I stomped a foot. Behind us, Mr. Blakeney had scrambled through the mob, along with two constables, one of whom toted an armload of blankets.

  “Stephen!” He lifted his arm in an expansive wave.

  “I found Genie,” I volunteered, and he grinned.

  “I saved the Mayor,” he said. “Or, well, Miss J. did. But I helped.”

  “You were quite the gallant, Mr. Blakeney.”

  “Is nobody going to tell me what happened?”

  Peony had abandoned her torment of Genie. She sat smugly, tail curled. “No.”

  Eventually, with as much excruciating slowness as the journey with Genie, the details all came to light. The police and Mr. Blakeney took Genie off to hospital to have her leg mended, the Mayor took LaRue home, and the rest of us found our way back to the surface, to assemble where we’d begun—in Leighton’s Mercantile. It began with Miss Judson’s accounting of herself.

  “While you and your father were gone, I took another look at Miss Shelley’s clippings,” she explained. “It seems she’d solved the case already—although she hadn’t realized it.” In among them was a retrospective piece we’d overlooked, from the Upton Register on the tenth anniversary of Olive’s disappearance. “It featured another family portrait—with the two remaining sisters. Then Cook mentioned that a young woman from the college had been hired as the musical entertainment for the Mayor’s ball—and as Genie would say, I put two and two together. So I dashed over to warn everyone.”

  “With Peony,” I said. “In a snowstorm.”

  “Naturally.”

  Father took over the account. “By this point I’d summoned the police to the Mayor’s house. I arrived . . . at about the same time Miss Judson was wrestling Leah on the buffet table.”

  Miss Judson wiped a smear of something from her bodice and looked at it sadly. “Cook’s trifle,” she said. “Pity.”

  Their narrative was improbable in the extreme, yet I could not discount the evidence before my very eyes. I closed my mind to the image of Miss Judson and Leah Blackwell locked in a Greco-Roman bout over a flaming Christmas pudding, and focused instead on the legal practicalities. “What about Leah? Did she say anything?”

  “Just a lot of vitriolic raving.” Father shook his head. “Bringing a dagger to the Mayor’s Christmas Ball? I’m going to recommend a psychiatric commitment.”

  I sighed, and Peony snuggled deeper into my lap. It was all so sad. “Now the Blackwells have lost two daughters.” Sometimes there was too much awfulness to go around.

  “I think Leah was always lost to them,” Miss Judson said. “Living in the shadow of Olive’s disappearance, shuffled away, she never got to have her own proper childhood.”

  “A proper childhood,” Father mused. “What would that look like, I wonder?”

  Miss Judson eyed me sidelong. “It would have fewer sewer expeditions,” she conjectured.

  “Well, happily,” I said, stroking Peony’s neck, “we’ll never know.”

  Christmas morning arrived amid a flurry of activity. I forced myself to stay abed until I heard Cook rattling about the kitchen, then scrambled into clothes and down the stairs.

  Several days had passed since the Mayor’s Christmas party came to such an ignominious end, and the village was still coming to terms with all of the revelations from that night. Genie had kept everyone entertained and informed from her hospital bed, reporting with vigor on every stage of the unraveling story. Leah had taken Mrs. Leighton’s place in jail, and the other Blackwells held a small private funeral for Olive. The Campanile was silent.

  Genie made the most of her own part of the adventure (taking particular delight in the most gruesome details of her experiences at the Royal Swinburne Hospital), even writing a splendid article casting me and LaRue as her rescuers. The Mayor might have given us medals—if he hadn’t resigned.

  Father, mug
of steaming cider in one hand, watched me bypass the parlor with its laden Christmas tree, ignore the dining room with its enticing Christmas breakfast (it took a considerable share of my Exceptional Forbearance to forgo the gingerbread, sending off its wafts of clovey steam), and slip out the door.

  “Father Christmas comes down the chimney,” he informed me.

  “I’m waiting for Caroline. She has Miss Judson’s present!” Inspiration had finally struck, in the midst of the week’s excitement. And I was hoping she might bring other news as well—the things that Genie had tactfully left out of the public version.

  Indeed she did. She bustled up the front walk, braid swinging. “I can’t stay long. Mother’s organized us to go caroling at the hospital.” She handed over a small, flat parcel, already wrapped. “It looks splendid. Nanette did good work.”

  And fast, thank goodness. “She got the gravy out?”

  “Most of it.”

  I grinned. That was even better. “What about your dad? Have you heard anything?”

  “He talked to Inspector Hardy for hours the other day.” She looked pensive. “Mr. Spence-Hastings is going to take a post in Canada. The Northwest Territories.”

  I felt a surge of something unfamiliar. “Poor LaRue.”

  “Anyway, you were right. Father had all of the papers from Mrs. Leighton’s, and he’s turned them over to the Inspector, along with everything he had in his decapitated? file. He’d saved it all, going back twenty years. Even the early police reports from Olive’s disappearance.”

  “Then they weren’t missing,” I said.

  She shook her head. “They were at our house the whole time! Can you believe it? He was worried something might happen to them. He wanted to make sure the whole story was preserved, good and bad.”

  Thinking about Genie and her suspicions, I had to approve.

  “He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. Mayor—Mr. Spence-Hastings had cleared him of any involvement in the plot against Olive or the forgery of the Chalice. It was still on display, by the way—now clearly labeled as a replica constructed and donated by Hadrian’s Guard. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that.