The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (19 page)

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Authors: Nancy Springer

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“Tell me where she is, then, and I will find her!”

Ah! He did not, after all, know everything!

I replied, “Such would not be her wish, no matter what extremity.”

“And you, Enola? You insist on following her willful example? You shall come to harm!”

“My dear Sherlock,” I told him almost tenderly, although I still held my dagger at the ready to keep him from approaching me, “the greatest harm I could possibly suffer would be to lose my liberty, to be forced into a conventional life of domestic duties and matrimony.”

“You cannot possibly mean that. Every decent woman’s calling is to take her proper place in society.” He stepped towards me.

I stopped him with a gesture of my weapon. “No nearer, I warn you.” In fact I could never have hurt him, but he knew me so imperfectly that he halted.

“I cannot believe a word you are saying, my dear sister,” he all but begged. “Let me see your face.”

It was little enough for him to ask, but I could not allow it; Dr. Watson might recognise Ivy Meshle in me. “No.” In the same moment I realised it was a ploy to take my attention away from my weapon; one uses two hands to raise a veil. “No, my oh-so-clever brother, I think not.” Still, my voice remained gentle; I hoped he could hear in its tone my affection for him. “I am going now. Please convey my good wishes to our brother Mycroft – ”

A considerable thumping commotion sounded behind me. At once, lowering my knife to hide it in the folds of my mantle, I turned and sped out of the library, just as the parlour-maid and a constable blundered in at the front door.

“Stop her!” my brother cried, but the parlour-maid, quite excited, was tugging the constable towards where Lady Cecily lay, and before Sherlock Holmes could shout again, I had darted out of the door, running down the street.

“Stop her!” My brother’s voice rang like a bugle in the night. I heard pursuit behind me, the constable’s thudding footfalls and my brother’s lighter, longer stride.

Like a hunted animal I leapt an iron railing and thumped down into a servants’ basement area. Fleeing for my very life – loss of freedom would have killed me – I sped out the back way and so into the maze of tool-sheds, workshops, and animal pens behind the houses. As I paused inside a carriage house to catch both my breath and my wits, I heard my brother speaking with the constable; then heard the latter halt at the call box on the street corner.

Oh, how lovely. Within moments he would have every police-man in London on the lookout for me.

“Bring me a lantern,” my brother’s commanding voice ordered someone. “She can’t have gone far.”

I ran out of the other end of the carriage house and onward, blindly, my thoughts frantic, despairing: Sherlock Holmes would search every horsestall, every cowshed, every shadow in the mews, while on the streets police patrolled; there was no place to hide.

My black mantle, my cowl and veil, my habit – they marked me, now and forevermore; I had to get rid of them.

But then what? Run home in my red flannel underpinnings?

In order to change my appearance and elude the pursuit, I needed a refuge.

But where could I go, with every man’s hand turned against me?

And every woman’s hand at the mercy of a man’s?

As I had chosen not to accept the lot of other girls – would it always be like this? Running, hiding, dodging, disguised? Enola, alone?

I did not allow myself to answer that question, forcing myself to think instead of what to do for the moment, as I emerged onto a cobbled thoroughfare and darted across it, recognising it as somewhere I had been before –

Baker Street.

Of course.

My feet, apparently possessing more intelligence than my head, had carried me to the one place where my brother was least likely to search for me.

With energy born of new hope I sped towards number 221, then darted behind the house. In the small backyard, as I had noticed on my previous visit, stood a single tree of the obliging, knobby sort known as “London Plane.” Up its excellent trunk I swarmed with no trouble at all, and after that it took only slight manoeuvering to climb onto the roof of the kitchen porch.

None too soon. As I sat, panting, two constables passed on opposite pavements of Baker Street, the one calling to the other, “Gel in a nun’s gear, Sergeant says.”

“Wit a knife, wot I ’ear, an’ irrational,” replied the other. “ ’Ard to believe, but they say, dangerous.”

“ ’Isteria,” said the other sagely. “Common affliction uv ’er sex.”

I wondered whether that was what Sherlock thought of me. Irrational. Hysterical.

Yes, it probably was.

After removing my boots so as to be more silent,

I padded across the roof to the window I judged must lead to my brother’s chamber. Gently I tried it, and it opened quite easily; as I expected, it was not snibbed. My brother was, after all, still my mother’s son, and a healthful sleeper, one who let in the fresh air at night.

Slipping inside and closing the window behind me, already I was planning how I would search his wardrobe for something else to wear – I knew he kept many disguises. He had even at times passed himself off as an old woman. A skirt, a shawl, and a hat of some sort would be all I needed.

Then I would wait, and rest, until I heard the door opening downstairs before I slipped out again the way I had come.

I knew I must never again disguise myself as the Sister of Charity.

I wondered whether it would still be safe to disguise myself as Ivy Meshle. Perhaps not. Holmes and Watson would surely discuss the night’s events, and Watson might confess his visit to “Dr. Ragostin” now.

I wondered whether I would ever see Lady Cecily again.

Probably not.

The only way for me to be safe and free was to be – be what my name decreed me. Enola. Alone.

As I placed fresh fuel on the hearth-fire of 221 Baker Street, I felt all the pain of that thought, but also some solace: whether he knew it or not, and whether he liked it or not, my brother Sherlock was giving me such shelter as family might offer. He
was
giving me refuge.

STILL IN THE CHILL OF WINTER, FEBRUARY, 1889

AT DAWN, THE GREAT DETECTIVE CLIMBS the stairs to his rooms, his step uncharacteristically leaden due to the fatigue and frustration of hours spent searching for a black butterfly that had paused for a few moments almost within his grasp before disappearing into the night, gone like a spirit – but his sister is no spirit, confound everything; she is a mere skinny broomstick of a girl, unequipped with wings, and could not possibly have actually flown away from the stony face of London; wherever could she have got to? Why could he not find her?

Head and shoulders bowed under the weight of his failure, he enters his lodging and closes the door behind him.

Odd. The sitting-room is quite warm, as if someone has been keeping the fire going all night. But that cannot be.

Yet it is. Glancing towards the hearth, he sees flames leaping merrily, and finds himself suddenly fully alert, for who – what intruder has entered here?

But even as he turns up the gas to have a look about, he strongly suspects, indeed even in advance of proof he
knows,
and chagrin as keen as a stiletto blade stabs his heart; he clenches his fists to keep from cursing aloud. In the fireplace he sees a substantial amount of charred black fabric, formerly a “nun’s habit,” no doubt. He can expect to find some garments missing from his supply of disguises. His oh-so-clever sister has made her escape after spending the night hiding in his own rooms, the one place he had not thought to look for her.

“The
nerve
of the girl!” he whispers between teeth set edge to edge. “The impudence, the effrontery, the sheer, unmitigated
daring
of her!” But as he glares at the evidence that, once again, his sister has outsmarted him, his hands relax along with his mouth, his thin lips twitch into a smile, and he begins heartily and almost joyously to laugh.

The following appears in the personal columns of the
Pall Mall Gazette
and other periodicals:

“Attention my Chrysanthemum: the second letter of innocence, twice the sixth of defiance; also its third and fourth; the second and third of departure and twice the sixth of defiance again. You? Your Ivy.”

The sender judges it safe to use this code – referring quite simply to the daisy, the thistle, and the sweet pea – because on the desk of her beloved adversary – her brother – she has seen a paper bearing puzzled notations:

??? true love
Purity
Thoughts
Innocence
Fidelity
Departure
EITOF P or A, D, or E??

How astonishing that the great detective has not broken this particular code, which to the girl seems the simplest! Yet if he
had
understood it, would he not be hot on the hunt for Gypsies, instead of lollygagging in London?

So she sends her message, ALL IS WELL, because she has guessed – she hopes she has guessed correctly – why she has not heard from her mother.

The establishment of Dr. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian, is Closed Until Further Notice – that is, until “Dr. Ragostin” can decide whether it is safe to go on. She wishes she could spend her now-free time helping the destitute street-dwellers of the East End, but she knows who will be watching for her there, even in the daytime. Consequently, until her bruised face has healed and also until she can think what she will do next, she keeps to her lodgings.

She sees nothing in the newspapers of Lady Cecily, for that affair is well hushed up. Of Alexander Finch, she sees only a few lines in the criminal docket, reporting his arrest on the charge of assault with intent to murder.

But the periodicals do not remain entirely devoid of interest. Within a few days, this remarkable communication appears in the “agony columns” of the
Times,
the
Morning Post,
the
Evening Standard,
and, indeed, all the daily newspapers:

“To E.H.: Please be reasonable. Amnesty promised on our family honour; no questions asked. Please contact. S.H. & M.H.”

It does not take the intended reader long to pen a reply and post it to the
Times,
et cetera. It appears the next day:

“To S.H. & M.H.: Rot. E.H.”

If any decent woman’s calling consisted of taking her proper place in society (husband and house, plus voice lessons and a piano in the drawing-room), then this particular woman-to-be prefers to remain indecent. Or, more accurately speaking, a disgrace to her family.

A few days afterward, she finds this interesting message in the
Pall Mall Gazette
’s personal columns: “llatdn at sdlu owu oy wen kIeni vgnig nilcato nytil edif.”

The youthful recipient deciphers this easily by reading it backwards while ignoring the spacing of the “words.” It affirms that her guess is correct as to why her mother did not answer her earlier plea: Mum will not, or can not, come to her rescue. Ever. Yet Mum cannot directly refuse such an appeal. Therefore, silence was the only response that eccentric old woman had been able to muster.

Until now.

Smiling ruefully, the reader hears in the printed words a voice that had often told her, as a child, much the same:

“Fidelity not a clinging vine I knew you would stand tall.”

In other words, “Daughter, I knew you would do quite well on your own.”

All is well?

I am a liar. All is not well. Not at all.

But, decides the girl named for solitude, it will be.

Someday.

Because she will attend to it.

Turn the page for a preview
of the next book in the
ENOLA HOLMES series . . .

The case of the Bizarre Bouquets

MARCH, 1889