“Neither did your mum.”
We regarded each other solemnly. Maybe so, but they’d both lost a good friend—several good friends—in a horrible way. “Tell him I’m sorry that she didn’t escape, like Mum hoped.”
She gave me a quick, fierce hug. “He told me to thank you for putting it all to rest.” With a little wave, she scurried back across the snowy park, already filling up with families and merrymakers and boys engaged in a battle with snowballs, and looking every bit the sort of scene Mr. Leighton would have wanted to build in his display. Perhaps Mrs. Leighton, now that she was free again, would fix it up instead.
Inside, Father, Miss Judson, Cook, and Peony were waiting. A stack of presents was waiting. Cocoa and gingerbread and biscuits were waiting—and somewhere across town, Aunt Helena was waiting with her Bûche de Noël. But first, the Hardcastles of No. 14 Gravesend Close had Serious Business.
Once the crackers were snapped and the paper crowns distributed, we sorted through the gifts. One of Miss Judson’s beautiful combs had broken in all the commotion, and Father never got the chance to present them to her, but the new hairbrush was some consolation. She flicked a finger across the boar bristles with satisfaction.
“Now you,” she said, handing me a parcel. “From the Blakeneys.”
It was a rigid, lumpy, untidily wrapped, mysterious-shaped package that rattled ever so slightly with my experimental shake. Peony subjected it to her own Inspection as I peeled away the tissue paper then held it up, wonderingly.
“I didn’t know you could have a miner’s helmet engraved,” Observed Father.
I traced the letters inscribed on the candle’s metal bracket:
to S M: Stay Incorrigible. —G&R B
Peony claimed it, with a long, approving swipe of her whiskers, and gave a contented burble. Unless that was me.
Finally, the moment arrived to present Miss Judson with her gift. Miss Judson, as you might predict, was a methodical and meticulous gift-unwrapper, painstakingly unsealing each flap and slipping the wrapping off untorn, in a process an Observer might find maddening. But at long last, she removed the lid from the box, unfolded the tissue, and held the contents up for us all to admire.
It was a crazy-patchwork dresser scarf—or the beginnings of one—pieced together from her ruined skirt, scraps of Genie’s blue coat, one of Father’s old waistcoats, an apron from Cook, a snippet of fungus-colored wool from an Anonymous Donor, and a lacy blue frock I’d destroyed last summer. Embroidered on the stained brown wool from her skirt were a sprig of olives, a wishing well, and a whistle, along with 1893 in fine stitchery.
Miss Judson took a long time to react, stroking the stitches and the stain with graceful, thoughtful, artistic fingers. “That,” she finally declared, eyes very bright, “is a work of magnificence.”
“Nanette Munjal made it,” I said. “But it was my idea. She’s going to teach me how to embroider a lily for the tea gown.” To commemorate Miss Judson’s and my first Investigation.
Father met my gaze with a smile. “Bene factum, Filia.”
After each scrap of cloth was identified, every stitch examined and admired, Miss Judson rose and draped the scarf in pride of place across the mantelpiece, where the plump stockings hung.
“What’s this I see?” she Inquired, prodding at the one that read Helena. (Despite years of pleading, this had never been redacted.)
I considered the evidence. “The round bulge at the toe is the approximate size and shape of Citrus sinensis, the sweet orange. The other item is hard and cylindrical, but it is unlikely to be a spyglass, as I already possess one. Therefore, I deduce—it is a rolled-up magazine.”
In triumph, I pulled it out: December’s issue of The Strand, with its light-blue cover and illustrated London street scene. At once I unfurled it and commandeered the settee, eager to settle in, at long last, with the much-anticipated Sherlock Holmes mystery.
“That will have to wait.” Miss Judson plucked it from my hands and returned it to the stocking. “I promised the Blakeneys we’d visit Genie before dinner with Aunt Helena, and Priscilla’s asked us over for tea this afternoon.”
I hopped up, magazine forgotten. “The hospital has an anatomy theater that’s open to the public. Maybe they’ll let us watch a procedure!” Then I caught the look of dismay on Father’s face. “Well, maybe not on Christmas.”
Father gave a sigh of relief. “Yes,” he said drily, “let’s save that Family Amusement for another time.”
The Investigation Will Continue in In Myrtle Peril
A Note from the Author
The term cold case did not enter the criminology lexicon until the 1970s, although long before anyone thought up the fitting and catchy phrase we use today, many cases went unsolved and lingered in their investigators’ imaginations. One of the most famous cold cases of all time is the still-unsolved murder of five women in London’s Whitechapel area in the fall of 1888.
The December 1893 issue of The Strand contained the last Sherlock Holmes story to be published in the nineteenth century. “The Adventure of the Final Problem” concerns the ill-fated confrontation between Holmes and a newly introduced archenemy, Professor Moriarty. Fans at the time were shocked, outraged, and dismayed by what they saw as an ignominious end to a literary folk hero. As is the case with Mrs. Blakeney, the opinion of this Learned Reader is not suitable for print. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle eventually returned to writing Holmes mysteries, with The Hound of the Baskervilles, serialized by The Strand from 1901 to 1902. Anyone looking for a truly worthy Sherlockian villain should reach for “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” which Myrtle will not get to read for another eleven years.
Scholars have debated the meaning of Socrates’s cryptic last words (as quoted by Plato) for millennia. Proposed explanations have covered everything from a simple appeal to the god of healing, to a rude joke. Classicist Colin Wells takes an investigative approach, systematically examining the crime scene, so to speak, for clues to the dying philosopher’s last request. Those interested in his conclusions can learn more at www.colinwellsauthor.com/articles.
Europeans have been fascinated by archaeological artifacts since the dawn of civilization, but the modern discipline of archaeology was still in its infancy in the 1870s, when Myrtle’s mother and her classmates were students. Forgeries and hoaxes plagued early archaeology, and some well-known artifacts are now thought to have questionable origins. Sometimes these fakeries supported prejudiced agendas. Hoaxsters tried to discredit scientists or give a particular region what they believed was a more distinguished history (such as a greater Roman presence in parts of ancient Britain, as with Professor Leighton’s Saturnalia Chalice; or the prehistoric settlement of North America by a “lost race” of Europeans with the so-called Davenport Tablets in the 1870s). Advances in scientific methods and stringent excavation practices gradually turned relic hunters and tomb raiders into scholars and scientists. Archaeology is practiced as a field of anthropology in the United States, while in England and Europe it’s considered a branch of history. In the years since I earned my anthropology degree, archaeology has undergone even further ethical and scientific advances.
Schofield College’s Campanile was inspired by the Iowa State University Campanile in my hometown of Ames, Iowa (where, to my knowledge, no one has ever fallen to her death . . . or not). I am grateful to Doris Aman, carillonist at the University of Rochester’s Hopeman Memorial Carillon, for answering my carillon questions, as well as her haunting and magical depiction of carillon acoustics. I hope I’ve done her lovely instrument justice.
My thanks, as always, to Myrtle’s incredible cohort at Algonquin Young Readers: editor Elise Howard, Ashley Mason, Sarah Alpert, Brett Helquist, Carla Weise, and Laura Williams, for making the books wonderful to behold. Thanks to Kelly Doyle, Megan Harley, and Caitlin Rubinstein for spreading the word about Myrtle far and wide. Exceptional thanks go to copyeditor ne plus ultra Sue Wilkins (who will no
doubt have something to say about this sentence). Thanks to Scott McKuen for consultation on nineteenth-century physics, maths, and chemistry. And to my partner in crime in all things, C.J. Bunce.
The Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries
Premeditated Myrtle
How to Get Away with Myrtle
Cold-Blooded Myrtle
Also by Elizabeth C. Bunce
A Curse Dark as Gold
StarCrossed
Liar’s Moon
Published by Algonquin Young Readers
an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2021 by Stephanie Elizabeth Bunce.
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN: 9781643752266
Cold-Blooded Myrtle Page 25
