The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (12 page)
Read The Case of the Left-Handed Lady Online
Authors: Nancy Springer
The cabby looked askance at such an ill-clad fare, but I tossed him a sovereign and hopped into his four-wheeler. “The British Museum!”
Any astonishment or resistance on his part overcome by the gold coin in his hand, he promptly obeyed.
I pulled the hood of my waterproof forward as far as I could to conceal my face. Impatiently I wiped away my tears with my hands. (Somewhere I had lost my handkerchief, onion and all.) No more snivelling, I commanded myself; I was doing something risky, indeed foolish, and I needed to have my wits about me.
The cab pulled up at the steps of the British Museum.
Rather than getting out, I peered from the shadows of the cab. I had no problem spying my brother Sherlock lounging against one of that venerable institution’s Grecian Revival columns, puffing a cigarette, the picture of a worthless idler. Very likely some constable would soon collar him and tell him to move on. As for Mum, there was no sign of her. If by any chance the message
had
come from her – if it had been intercepted by Sherlock, rather than originating from him – if Mum
had
appeared, then obviously my brother would not be loitering where he was.
had
come from her – if it had been intercepted by Sherlock, rather than originating from him – if Mum
had
appeared, then obviously my brother would not be loitering where he was.
With a sigh of relief, I smiled. I had been right all along. Mum was safe in the country somewhere, and Sherlock was trying to outsmart his disgraceful younger sister. When he went home, he would find out who was smart.
The cab-driver had appeared at the door. “Miss?”
“Drive on,” I told him.
All that evening by the warmth of my humble hearth-fire I cherished my reclaimed booklet of ciphers in my hands. Such bliss, to see again that familiar first page bordered with Mum’s daintily hand-painted gold and russet chrysanthemums around her handwritten ALO NEK OOL NIY MSM UME HTN ASY RHC. And something new: On the page Sherlock had pencilled the solution, ENOLA LOOK IN MY CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
On the next page, decorated with windflowers, he had printed SEE WITHIN MY ANEMONES ENOLA. And so on – he had solved the cipher illustrated by the ivy on the picket fence (ENOLA LOOK IN MY BED KNOBS); indeed, he had deciphered all the messages, including some I hadn’t been able to. For a page decorated with pansies: HEARTS EASE BE YOURS ENOLA SEE IN MY MIRROR. With a pang I wondered which mirror, and what my brother had found behind the mirror’s backing: perhaps not just a sum of money? Perhaps a note from Mum, expressing regret, or farewell, or concern, even –
I stopped myself far short of the word
love.
Mum had more important things to do. She was a woman of character, intellect, and principle. A Suffragist, tireless in her devotion to matters concerning the rights of the fair sex. A free-thinker. And an artist. A very good artist, as evidenced by the lovingly – or to choose another word, the exquisitely rendered flowers adorning the booklet in my hands.
love.
Mum had more important things to do. She was a woman of character, intellect, and principle. A Suffragist, tireless in her devotion to matters concerning the rights of the fair sex. A free-thinker. And an artist. A very good artist, as evidenced by the lovingly – or to choose another word, the exquisitely rendered flowers adorning the booklet in my hands.
While I adored Mum’s handiwork, I found myself now turning my attention to my brother’s notations. He had pencilled them so lightly that I could easily have erased them, so that my cipher book would be once again the way Mum had given it to me. But rather to my surprise, I found that I wanted to keep Sherlock’s intrusions. I wanted to possess something of my brother, if only his small, precise lettering beneath my mother’s artistic flourishes.
Handwriting tells a great deal about a person in my opinion, both that which is plain to be seen and that which may be hidden. I had been thinking of my brother Sherlock as the great detective, incisive and commanding, but his handwriting was smaller than my mother’s. He did not think of himself as so very big. He might indeed be a bit shy in his way, as I was.
Although severely logical. My mother’s fanciful handwriting could have been put down to artistic temperament, but just the same, I thought, it showed her aspirations, her idealism, her dreams. But in my brother’s printing: no dreams. His was the bleak realism of the scientist.
Although, I cautioned myself, under different circumstances – perhaps a letter to a friend, written instead of printed, would show more heart. People can have different handwritings. Look at Lady Cecily.
Perhaps not the best example. Her handwritings were
too
different. Her perfectly modest, correct, stylish notes and letters on the one hand, but then her big, childish, backwards scrawl on the other –
too
different. Her perfectly modest, correct, stylish notes and letters on the one hand, but then her big, childish, backwards scrawl on the other –
Hand.
And suddenly, while I lounged half-drowsing before my fire, with nary a thought of accomplishing anything or finding anyone, up flashed a memory of Lady Cecily’s desk. As if my mind had slipped a slide into a magic lantern, projecting an image, I saw the lady’s lovely jade writing implements. Placed to the left.
And I quite clearly remembered seeing Lily, the too-faithful maid, then shift ink-pot, pen, et cetera, over to the right.
A shock of insight jolted me wide-awake. I sat bolt upright, staring.
At my own dressing-table, its very modest hairbrush, comb, jar of hand-cream, and so forth positioned upon the right side, of course, because I am - right-handed.
But how had Lady Cecily’s silver-embossed dresser set been placed?
“Oh, my
stars,
” I whispered.
stars,
” I whispered.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
“HOT WATER, MISS MESHLE!”
Thus startled out of a few hours of sleep by my landlady’s too-cheery bellow, I groaned aloud: My triumphant feelings in regard to my brother Sherlock had vanished overnight, replaced by terror of possible consequences.
“Miss Meshle, are you awake?” Confound the deaf old woman, she had not, of course, heard my less-than-civil response.
I felt disinclined to get up and go to work. And one would think I could have lain abed, for the terms of Miss Meshle’s employment with Dr. Ragostin were exceedingly lenient – yet I could not sleep through the morning in my own lodging without exciting the curiosity of my landlady.
“Miss Meshle!” Mrs. Tupper rapped on the door.
“Ye gods!” I muttered naughtily to myself before I called aloud, “I’m awake!”
“Eh? Are you up?”
“Yes! Thank you! Mrs. Tupper!”
Of course it would be blood pudding that morning for breakfast. I loathe blood pudding. On that and other accounts, Miss Meshle reported to work in an ungracious frame of mind.
Yesterday (perhaps fortunately) there had been no time for me to think about my brother Sherlock, but now I realised the danger he presented, as he knew so much more than he should.
As evidenced in IVY MEET ME STEPS BRITISH MUSEUM, he knew my assumed name.
He knew, Doctor Watson had said, that I had money.
He knew of my enciphered communications with Mum, and had decrypted them.
And worst of all, at any moment he might learn much more from his best friend, the aforementioned Dr. Watson. Suppose my brother relented of his rudeness to Watson and confided in him? And suppose that Watson then confessed to Holmes concerning his visit to Dr. Ragostin? In the space of one simple conversation, Sherlock Holmes could have his attention quite thoroughly focused upon Ivy Meshle.
“Curses!” I muttered as I entered my office. “Curses, bosh, and humbug. Suppose crows turn white.” Sitting down by the hearth, I pushed fear out of my mind if not quite out of my shivering body. Sipping tea, I read the morning newspapers, replete with all the usual shocks and horrors. An anti-vaccination mob in the East End had threatened the district nurse. Several female charity workers had been arrested in Holywell Street for giving out “pornographic” materials about “preventive checks” to childbirth. A gas explosion had violated a home in Knightsbridge, killing three servants and causing great distress to the family. It was rumoured that dock-workers were holding clandestine meetings of a subversive nature. Agriculture continued to languish due to cheap imported corn from America. Et cetera.
But there was
still
no word from Mum.
still
no word from Mum.
Confound everything.
It was cold, I told myself, that made me shiver. In the time it had taken me to go through the newspapers, the fire had dwindled considerably. I bundled all of them onto the grate, and in that temporary blaze of warmth – and triumph, mind over matter – I marched to my desk. Brother Sherlock could go – go to – go to the Phrenologist, and there was nothing I could do about Mum, but if I wished to call myself a perditorian, I had better get to work.
Seizing upon my sheaf of foolscap, rapidly I pencilled several small likenesses of Lady Cecily’s lovely head. On one of them I sketched an elaborately trimmed wide-brimmed hat; upon another a flat “Gypsy” bonnet, on another a straw boater, on another a tiny hat supporting a spray of feathers as was the latest fashion, and on another a plain shawl. The fire died down again, and the room grew colder and colder; I shivered, my fingers stiffening so that they held the pencil with difficulty, but I kept drawing. I depicted Lady Cecily with her hair in a bun and no hat at all, then with a rag of cloth wrapped around her head, and then in a maid’s cap, with a comb that stood up at the back of her head like a wren’s tail, with a snood, and finally in a veil. Finished to my satisfaction, I reached for the bell-pull and rang.
“Joddy,” I requested when that eager boy appeared, “would you replenish the fire, please?”
He sprang to do so. Taking a seat in the armchair, stretching my hands towards the welcome flames, I left my sketches on the desk where he would see them as he returned from refilling the coal scuttle.
Surreptitiously I watched him from the corner of my eye. He glanced at the drawings, and then he jerked to a halt, staring, and after that it did not matter that I turned my head to watch him with interest, for his whole attention had fixed on the sketches.
I got up to stand beside him. “Do you still recognise her?” I asked.
Quite forgetting his manners, he nodded.
I let his lapse pass to ask, “When did you see her?”
“I don’t rightly know, Miss Meshle.”
“Last year?”
“No! This past week or two.”
“On a street corner. With a basket.”
“Yes.”
“And what was she wearing?”
He pointed at the picture of a girl with a rag wound around her head.
“Ah,” I murmured, so surprised that I forgot any further questions. Indeed, I felt rather weak.
What one wears on one’s head, you see, indicates one’s station in society as surely as if one wore a placard around one’s neck.
And in this case, Lady Cecily’s placard would have said “desperately poor.”
So much for my theory that, like me, she was attempting to minister to London’s destitute.
Instead, it would seem that she had
joined
the ranks of those who live in poverty.
joined
the ranks of those who live in poverty.
Several hours later, in a paisley dolman over an expensive but restrained visiting-dress of Prussian blue merino, “Mrs. Ragostin” once more approached the stately residence of Sir Eustace Alistair, Baronet.
But rather than going immediately to the door, I stood on the pavement, studying the baronet’s abode. While mansions in the country tend to spread horizontally, those in crowded London are necessarily built on a vertical plan, with the kitchen in the basement, the dining-room above (served by a dumb-waiter), the drawing-room above that (away from the noise and dirt of the street), bedchambers on the next floor, and then the children’s nursery and schoolroom on the next, and so on up to the servants’ quarters and the attic.
Lady Cecily’s bedchamber, I knew from my previous visit, was located on the children’s level, just below the servants’ quarters.
Studying the distance from that floor to the ground, I shook my head. Then, remembering my ladylike charade in time to restrain my usual longlegged stride, I minced around the side of the house to see whether the situation somehow looked better from the back.
It did not, of course, and while I peered at Lady Cecily’s windows, several astonished servants paused in their outdoor tasks to peer at
me.
me.
“You!” Imperiously I beckoned to a scullion-boy struggling with slop buckets. “Come here.”
He obeyed me instantly, of course, even though he had not a notion who I was, for I had assumed the manner as well as the clothing of the ruling class.
When he stood before me I asked more quietly, “The ladder by which Lady Cecily took her leave – where is it kept?” For the ladder must necessarily be on the premises. No one could carry such a thing through London at night without being noticed.
Rendered speechless by such a frank question on such a forbidden subject, the lad merely gestured towards the carriage house, which was quite large enough to have provided lodging for several families less blessed with riches than the baronet’s.
In the carriage yard stood a handsome barouche which three grooms were polishing. Or had been, until my advent had shocked them motionless.
I sailed towards them. “Let me see this ladder,” I commanded.
One of them, presumably he with the most presence of mind, led me into the carriage house and pointed upward to where the ladder resided upon the rafters.
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