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Authors: Nancy Springer

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BOOK: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady
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However, this time, it was not Ivy Meshle who sallied forth to the department store. Instead, it was Mrs. Ragostin. Or not Mrs. Ragostin, exactly, for today I wore a rich satin-and-velveteen day-dress not at all dowdy, and I would exhibit no timidity of manner. Alexander Finch had my-ladied me; very well, I’d be a lady – or at least, gentry – and I’d see how he liked that. I paid my sixpence a mile in order to arrive at Finch & Son in a cab.
A hansom cab, despite the cold, because I wanted a good view of the building’s exterior.
Warmly wrapped in my long fur cloak, I did not immediately exit the cab as it drew to a halt in front of the Finch establishment. I took my time, looking: not at that glittering mercantile palace of brass, gas, and glass, the Emporium itself, but instead peering skyward, studying the building’s upper storeys where the clerks lodged. Dormers. Gables. Drainpipes.
Closely approximating the dormers and gables and drainpipes of the buildings on either side.
Meanwhile, a uniformed constable, looking quite dull, stood across the street, no doubt stationed there to watch the front door in case Alexander Finch came out.
Humph.
Exiting the cab and dismissing it, I sailed into the department store with my silk-gloved hands in my fur muff, my hat towering with ostrich feathers and my skirt regally trailing.
“I should like to speak with Master Alexander Finch,” I demanded condescendingly of the first clerk I encountered.
A slight, freckled, rickety sort of young man, he visibly fumbled for words before squeaking out a reply. “Alexander Finch, ah, I am not sure he is in just now, ah, my lady.”
I arched my brows in feigned ire and genuine astonishment: This hapless clerk was more afraid of young Finch than he was of
me
?
I remembered how the willowy girl at the shoe counter had fled at young Finch’s command.
At that misfortunate moment it occurred to me to wonder: Why had that peculiar youth chosen to converse with me in the shoe department, while walking past, for instance, gloves?
Because he liked boots, I supposed. Especially the lace-up sort. He enjoyed pulling the lacings tight; why, he had quite strangled –
I felt the strangest chill run through me, as my personage comprehended a moment in advance of my mind. Indeed, I suddenly felt so weak that I swayed on my feet.
“My lady?” The clerk’s anxious voice seemed to reach me from a great distance.
As those other voices had sounded, so far away, that night as I had regained consciousness with a garrote still around my neck. I remembered terror, blur, fog, the nondescript man lifting my veil.
I remembered where I had seen Alexander Finch’s face before.
The freckled clerk cried, “Help, somebody! She’s going to faint!”
An excellent idea, as my intentions had taken quite a sudden about-face. I now fervidly wished to avoid speaking with Alexander Finch; he must not see me. And while I had never feigned a faint before, it seemed simple enough. Rolling my eyes upward as I closed them, I began to collapse towards the floor.
“Catch ’er, then!” Another male voice, rather Cockney, spoke close to my ear as the fellow grasped me under the elbow.
The rickety clerk, I think, took my other arm, and I allowed myself to sag in the hands of my supporters as they hustled me through a door somewhere off to the side of the store. “Lay ’er on the bench,” said another voice, a woman’s this time. “ ’Oo is she?”
“Dunno. She wanted to see Master Alexander.”
“Coo! Somebody ought to warn ’er.”
I felt my personage being placed as directed, gently enough, considering how unyielding a wooden bench is. Someone began to unbutton my high collar. Easing my eyes open just enough to peep through my eyelashes, I saw that my Good Samaritan was a female servant of middle age. The highbacked bench faced the hearth, hiding the rest of the room from my view, but I surmised – if only from that rude item of furniture – that they had taken me to the clerks’ tea-and-luncheon room.
“What did she want to see ’im for?” asked a man’s voice.
“I dunno. Right wrought up, she was.”
“D’ye think, wit the swag she’s wearin’ on ’er, she might be a shipyard boss’s wife, like? Or a factory owner’s? Tryin’ to talk some sense into ’im about all the trouble ’ee’s stirrin’ up?”
“I always did say them factory ’uns are a rough lot, especially them match girls.” Unbuttoning my cuffs to chafe my wrists, the servant evidently considered herself to be on equal standing with the clerks, for she spoke her mind. “Them and their so-called strike. Too mule-headed to touch chemicals, an’ only workin’ fourteen hours a day now – ”
“It’s not the match girls ’ee’s fomentin’ anymore, it’s the dock-men and – ”
“ – and what they want with all that free time is beyond me, doin’ whatever they like – ”
“ – and the carters and such.”
“ – spoilin’ their reputations, lurin’ good girls out of the domestic service, and this poor lady faintin’ away for want of proper care – where’s the smellin’ salts, for the luvva mercy?”
“Oh! Right ’ere!”
With my eyes once more firmly lidded, I laid still as the pungent restorative was presented to my nose, disciplining myself not to respond, for I wanted to hear more. While my person and face appeared, I hoped, insensible, my mind hopped, shrieked and grabbed like a child presented with sugar-plums: Foment? Alexander Finch? Dock workers? Match girls? Strike? Hadn’t Joddy mumbled something about a match and a strike?
One of the male voices was saying, “The carters is mostly bein’ sensible, wot I ’ear, but the dockyards is all like a pot on the boil to strike a blow for worker’s rights, wot they call it.”
“She ain’t comin’ round.” My nurse sounded worried. “Get me a scissors so’s I can cut her staylacings.”
Oh. Oh, no, she must not be permitted to see my corset. I bestirred my eyelids slightly.
“Wait a minute,” said the kindly woman.
At the same time an unmistakable voice roared from somewhere close at hand, “What’s going on here? Get back to your stations!”
“Yes, Mr. Finch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The lady fainted, you see.”
“Lady?” bellowed the elder Finch. “What lady?”
I interjected a moan, in order to deflect his attention from his clerks onto me.
“Well, send for a doctor!” he barked. “You men get back to work. You got no business loitering about when a lady’s lying down.”
The door slammed behind their various voices. I opened my eyes, smiled weakly at the servant, and told her I was feeling better, thank you so much, but my over-fed candy-grabbing mind snatched at “loitering.” Alexander Finch had been just a bystander perhaps, who had chanced to be “loitering about” on the night I was unconscious, lying in the street?
Which was only a few days after Lady Cecily had disappeared?
When the police were supposed to be keeping a close eye on him?
Each thought made me feel queasier, more faint and ill, but I forced myself to smile, stand up, and take my leave, for matters of the utmost urgency required my attention.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
 
BEFORE THE SHADOWY SMOKE-CLOTTED day could darken to even more shadowy night, I returned to the vicinity of Ebenezer Finch & Son. I will spare the gentle reader a full account of the risks of detection I had run in the interval; briefly put, after changing back into Miss Meshle at Dr. Ragostin’s office, I had then, at my lodging, eluded Mrs. Tupper to exit as a nun, wearing my heavily veiled habit for the sake of its total concealment of my features, even though it made me an object of curiosity. I felt the glances of passersby as I walked out of St. Pancras Station; these Londoners had not seen me before. In this reasonably prosperous area there was small need for the Sister of the Street’s ministrations.
Not that I had ventured here for the sake of charity. I came empty-handed. So to speak, as my gloved fingertips beneath my mantle, folded almost as if in prayer, rested upon the concealed hilt of my dagger.
I ventured nowhere near the resplendent front of Ebenezer Finch & Son Emporium. Instead, approaching that seductive establishment from the rear, through a maze of mews where cart-horses and milk-cows were kept, I stopped in the shadow of a pigeon-cote to survey the terrain. Once again I studied the Finch building’s windows, roofline, and rainspouting with an interest which architecture had never before inspired in me; this was the first time I’d had occasion to regard a building as a structure to be climbed. As if surveying a winter tree for the best way up and/or down, with my gaze I traced different routes until I decided how
I
would do it.
Predicting, then, where in the rapidly darkening back passageways Alexander Finch would descend, I retreated once more into the concealing mews, made a circuit, then found myself a sheltering doorway in which to wait.
Before it was quite dark, as I had expected – for he needed to be able to see his way down somewhat, and he could not give himself away by carrying a light – just at nightfall here he came like a sort of monstrous caterpillar along the rooftops, creeping along shingles or tiles on his knees and elbows, keeping his head down and staying out of sight of any constable who might be standing watch in the street or at the store’s back door. From time to time I lost sight of him behind chimney-stacks, but always in a brief while he reappeared. With a nimble ease that showed how often he had done this before, he swung himself across the gaps between buildings. Having reached the end of the row, he descended to the eaves, swivelled around and let himself down by the water-pipe on to the wooden top of a covered water-barrel and so to the gravel of the corner chandler’s delivery-drive.
I could just make out the pale mask of his face, eyeglasses and all, as he glanced around. Rather than the dandified garments in which I had seen him previously, he wore the rough dark flannel and corduroy of a day-labourer, and a cloth cap. As soon as he had made sure there was no one nearby – or so he thought – he strode off towards the street.
I let him get well ahead of me before I slipped from the shadows and followed.
This, northwest London, was a quarter not nearly so poor as the East End – no ladies of the night or water-spigots stood on the corners; folk here had their own vices and their own plumbing – but neither was it fashionable nor rich. Nondescript, like Alexander Finch’s face, with streets neither crowded nor deserted, it was an area I knew only a little. I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I had been in this part of the city: to visit Dr. Watson, to burgle my brother Sherlock’s lodgings, and twice to “shop” at Ebenezer Finch & Son Emporium. Four times not counting the venture of the moment. It is no wonder I rather lost my way as I followed Alexander Finch.
And on several occasions I very nearly lost
him.
It was, fortuitously, a night rather less thick than usual, but even so, darkness abounded. I had seen the electric lighting along the Thames Embankment – utterly amazing, nearly turning night to day. By comparison, the wavering flames of gas street-lamps only interrupted the night, did not vanquish it. Most of the time Alexander Finch, like the other folk on the street, remained a shadow amongst shadows; I could see him clearly only when he passed directly under a street-lamp.
So that he should not see me in like wise, I walked in the middle of the street – a venture I hope never to repeat. In daytime, it would have been dangerous; at night, and all clad in black, it was doubly so. Even with their coal-oil lamps lit, the carriage drivers could not see me to avoid running me over had I not dodged them: no simple matter, as the footing consisted of nameless, icy slop and horse muck. More than once I nearly fell, and one time I did indeed lose my footing and had to roll across the cobbles to keep myself from being trampled under the horses’ iron-shod hooves. I struggled up, skirt and mantle wet and dragging, just in time to get out of the way of a great clopping Clydesdale pulling a lumber-wagon.
Indeed there were many carts and wagons now; Alexander Finch had led me into a sort of warehouse area adjacent, as nearly as I could reckon, to the great produce market, Covent Garden. Where on Earth –
But even as I wondered, he halted at a decrepit doorway over which an ill-lettered placard advertised:
BEDS SIXPENCE/NIGHT
WOMEN’S WARD EIGHTPENCE
TEA, BREAD, WASHING-WATER EXTRA
 
In other words, the poorest sort of doss-house, or common-lodging house, with flea-and-lice-infested cots set in rows, the sort of place where the pitiful, hairless “crawler” on the workhouse steps had lost her few remaining possessions to a thief. The sort of place that had likely given her the ringworm in exchange.
I guessed – yet could not believe what I was thinking – whom young Finch expected to find within.
But rather than knock at the door, he stepped around the corner of the slovenly building, out of sight.
Biting my lip, I stood like a black, muck-coated statue on the far side of the street, for, I admit, I simply did not know what to do. If I followed him into the narrow space between buildings, surely he would notice me. Yet if I did not follow him –
BOOK: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady
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