The Mysterious Lady Law (8 page)

“No, no. It may take a while to sink in, but please go on.”

“Very well. That leads us to the horrific events of two days ago when he attacked you, too. I submit that by that time, his mind was irrevocably turned. He was no longer thinking rationally. A character such as his—withdrawn, tightly-wound, given to anxiety—is most susceptible to the queering aftermath of trauma. The guilt fed his paranoia and he became convinced you were his biggest threat. Georgina’s sister, her confidante,
you
were the one most likely to have the map, and the one most likely to pursue the investigation—pursue him, in effect—indefinitely. He approached us in the church, remember? The man in the green bowler hat?”

Julia bowed in deep concentration, then gave an emphatic nod. “Yes, I remember him.”

“Well, I thought he was going to follow me into the park, but he must have waited and tracked you instead. He bided his time throughout the Dover flyover, then made his move. The rest you know.” Lady Law paused. “But we will never truly know what went on in his twisted mind. It is a shame; he was a highly promising young scientist, well thought of by Sir Horace. What strain he must have been under to snap like that. Yet, that can never excuse a murderer, nor should it.”

Silence. A busy, interminable moment, for Julia couldn’t quite grasp how a benign man could turn so ruthless and insane in so short a time. Over a
map?
A treasure map? Such things abounded in adventure books and cheap fiction but not in the real world and certainly not on Freeborn Avenue, where nothing more exotic than a half-Canadian milkman called Frank had ever shown up. No, Lady Law’s account might fit neatly enough into one of her miraculous case files, but it was all a little too, for want of a better word…miraculous.

Julia eyed the tight, creamy pallor of the lady’s face. Untouchable. Sculpted in beguiling and hardened wax mystery. But hollow somehow, inanimate inside. Lady Law ought to be a showpiece in Madame Tussaud’s, if she wasn’t already.

“Well I’m sorry to run, but I have another appointment, Julia.” She got up, stiffer than Julia remembered her in the church. “I just wanted to tell you what happened personally. Unless there’s anything else I can help you with, I’m glad to say the case has been solved. Scotland Yard will confirm it with you later.”

“So that’s that?”

“Yes, I must go on to the next, I’m afraid. For what it’s worth, your escape the other night was one of the most admirable feats I have come across in all my years. I have earmarked it for a special mention in my next book.”

“You’re most kind.”

“My pleasure, Julia. I wish you well.”

“Goodbye, Harriet and thank you.”

Julia watched her leave, then sank back on the bed, studying the map. If
this
was the crux of the whole affair, its story had better be a good one. Sir Horace Holly? She hadn’t realised he lived in England, or for that matter, that he was still alive. But Al would help her find him. He had to. This investigation would not become just another footnote in Lady Law’s memoirs. Perhaps Al’s protests had made her sceptical of anything Lady Law said, but the more Julia considered the woman’s account, the more far-fetched it felt. It would undoubtedly read well and convince the rest of the world, but…

There had to be more than…
Oh my God.
Why hadn’t that occurred to her before?

She slammed the map onto the mattress and jumped up, then listened through the open window for the Hi-wheel leaving outside.

It was time to get to the bottom of another mystery.

By five o’clock the gas lighter was already making his rounds, lighting the streetlamps with surgical precision. Steam-powered cranes billowed white clouds as they raised workmen to dismantle scaffolding from the new submarine factory. Tired shopkeepers dragged their advertisement stands inside, paid the window cleaners and errand boys, and then set about tidying their storefronts. Men with faces blackened by oil and coal lumbered home from the factories. As dusk descended, London wound down for the day.

Meanwhile, Al snapped at the reins to rush the horses and police carriage over a junction of tram lines. Julia held her black touring hat in place, but the wind ripped out one of its red feathers. With her free hand she waved to Francine Mowbray, one of the girls in her chorus line who stood outside a hairdresser’s shop.

She turned to Al and shivered at the fierce determination in his face, the rage spurring him on. Longing swarmed inside her. He was in rare form and it was woe betide anyone who stood in his way this evening.

“How much farther is it?” she yelled over the clattering hooves.

“Not far now. Three more blocks, then it’s at the far end of Wellington, adjacent to the park.”

Though she might not look the part in her red, two-piece walking suit trimmed with black lace, Julia suddenly felt like one of Wilkie Collins’s detectives, speeding to solve a labyrinthine case. All she had were inklings. Al’s long-held suspicions didn’t add up to much either. Indeed, if they were to confront Lady Law, it would have to be as a triumvirate. Sir Horace Holly had said over the telephone that he possessed actual evidence of her deception. More than that, he was willing to use it. His protégé’s good name depended on it.

But what exactly was his evidence?

Al stopped the carriage outside a small detached house with Tudor style windows. The curtains were drawn, two lights on downstairs. The front door was a heavy, gothic-looking thing, its brass knocker like something one would find on an Eastern European castle.

She knocked three times.

A short, appallingly ugly man with huge greying sideburns answered. He blinked small but alert eyes at each of them in turn, as though his mind were taking photographs. “Good evening Constable, Miss Bairstow. Horace Holly at your service. You may call me Holly.”

Julia gave him a nod. “How do you do?”

“Come in, come in. My housekeeper is away for the evening, so you’ll have to excuse the mess.” He led them into his study which was dimly lit by a single oil lamp next to a large pile of papers on his desk. He lit another lamp on the sideboard opposite.

“Please have a seat,” he said.

Al let Julia take the comfy armchair, while he sat on a wooden stool near the glassless display cabinet.

“Anything to drink?” Holly motioned to a crystal bottle of port on the sideboard. They declined. Rather than spin his writing chair to face them, he straddled it the wrong way. “Very well. Where shall we begin?”

“What on earth is that?” Julia pointed to a brass telescope, two feet long, lying beside the pile of papers on Holly’s desk. Strangely, its segments were notched and a silver oblong piece of metal, about eight inches wide, bisected the shaft.

“That is why you are here,” Holly explained, retrieving his pipe from his trouser pocket. “If my assumption is correct and my protégé’s findings are reliable,” he said as he stuffed a few pinches of tobacco into the pipe bowl, “then Lady Law is going to have the surprise of her life.”

He lit the pipe and then added, “That instrument is the one thing she didn’t factor into her fiction.”

“Please explain, sir,” Al intrigued. “You said something on the telephone about evidence?”

“Indeed, my boy. I did indeed.” Holly fetched a journal from his desk drawer. “This belonged to Josh Cavendish. He wrote in it almost every day. His last several entries are of particular importance.”

He read Josh’s account of the portable psammeticum telescope, of the finding of 144 Challenger Row and of his brief acquaintance with Georgina. Then he described the desperate telephone call he’d received the night of the murder, which was also the night of Josh’s disappearance.

“That’s quite a tale, Holly. But what does it all mean?” asked Al, keeping a watchful eye on Julia.

She leaned forward, rapt in the carpet’s nondescript pattern, as realization washed through her. “I think I know.”

“Miss Bairstow?” inquired Holly.

When she didn’t answer, Al looked at her. “Julia?”

“Hmm. Yes, it’s all beginning to make a weird sort of sense,” she mused aloud. “Tell me, Holly, is the occupant of 144 Challenger Row…Lady Law?”

“Yes.”

“And did you trick her about the map? About its importance, I mean?”

Holly drew his pipe away from his mouth, midpuff. “Why,
yes.
How on earth did you—”

“I put the two halves of the story together, that’s all. Yours and mine. Each on its own would make little sense. But side by side…”

Al and Holly shared a look of bewilderment, as if to say, “If a woman can see through this, why the hell can’t we?”

“Please give us your account of the map, Holly,” Julia urged, “before I jump to any wrong conclusions.”

He cleared his throat. “Very well. You’re confoundedly tight-lipped about all this, but I’m glad to help. It was no great gambit. Lady Law visited me the other day and inquired after my upcoming African expedition. She seemed to know about the priceless archaeological site Josh and I had found. She wanted to know more about it and said it might be the reason why Josh was in trouble. I knew she was lying but I played along to see where she went with it. So I told her about a secret map Josh had in his possession—a map we were going to follow to make us rich.”

“But it’s all hogwash! The map, the archaeological trove and the stakes of the expedition. Josh and I were going to Namibia to find several rare species of animals and to bring them back. Nothing more. We drew the map for a new adventure book I’m preparing. Readers love a good treasure hunt. One has to blend fact with fancy if one wants to turn a profit these days. It isn’t the most honourable thing to admit, but that’s entirely the point. The map was a complete phony. Lady Law, on the other hand, took it as a vital piece of evidence. And from what you told me, Constable Grant, she has spun it quite ingeniously into her own fictional account of the crime.”

“Exactly,” Julia piped up, full of vinegar. “She claimed she found the map among my rubbish. Even said it was the reason Josh turned murderous. But
what if
…” She paused to think, pressed the side of her fist up to her chin, “…what if Josh saw something he shouldn’t have in Lady Law’s house. She had him followed, even kidnapped him, to make sure he couldn’t tell anyone what he’d seen. That was when she found the map on him. Maybe he really had been showing it off to Georgy, to impress her. In any event, Georgy had to have let Josh into the house in the first place, so whether she saw anything there or not, she now had to be killed. To protect Lady Law’s secret.”

Al shot in, “But why would Josh try to kill
you
, Julia?” A frown rippled his wide brow. “On the airship, in the museum…” He left off, deep in thought. “Unless—”

“It wasn’t Josh,” Holly confirmed. “I can tell you that without equivocation. Josh Cavendish was no killer. The body they found in the canal—the body I identified—might have been his…” His voice faded and he lowered his gaze “…but there’s something missing. And as we’ve disproved Lady Law’s entire theory about the map, Josh would have had no motive to murder either you or your sister, Miss Bairstow.”

He sat up straight, his eyes widening. “No, it is painfully obvious now…the man who chased you from the airship was one of her goons and when he fell into the canal, she switched his dead body with Josh’s whom she had already murdered. She had orchestrated the whole grotesque plot and doctored the entire case to serve her own ends.”

“To protect her secret,” Julia agreed.

Quiet gripped the study. Holly drew several long breaths of pipe smoke through his pursed lips, while Al poured himself a glass of port and swigged it down in one go.

“In that case, there’s only one thing left to do.” Al announced, then capped the port bottle. “We take that thing,” he pointed to the prototype telescope, “and find out once and for all what Lady Law is hiding. Her plan was far too well-executed. Too well-timed. Switching bodies in the canal? Dressing Josh’s corpse up to look exactly like the man who attacked Julia? There’s something very clever and very dangerous at work here. Indeed,
most
of her cases have been too bloody clever! I hate to say supernatural…but that’s all I have, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, it isn’t supernatural, old boy,” countered Holly. “Josh was a man of science and he found her secret, whatever it is, through science. Bear that in mind. And don’t let the woman’s reputation start you off on the wrong foot either. I’ve hacked through jungle with Quatermain. They’re all just people, flawed, frightened of one thing or another. Harriet Law murdered Josh and Georgina in fear…fear of her secret getting out. She tried to kill you, Miss Bairstow, because you were a question mark. Georgina might have told you something in confidence, perhaps something about Josh and his discovery. Harriet Law couldn’t take the chance of you putting two and two together. She sized you up and found you too bright, too determined. When you survived, she had to make her case quick, so you’d let it rest. But here you are, and here we are, all thanks to this.” He placed the psammeticum telescope and its attachment—an energy meter that resembled a clock barometer—gently into a duffel bag that already bulged with something. He held a deep breath before snatching up his long, silver hunting rifle from the side of the cabinet—as though he’d been pondering the decision all day. “Purely a precaution,” he answered Julia’s worried expression. “But I fear a necessary one. Shall we?” He motioned to the door.

Al halted them in the vestibule. “On second thought, I really ought to telephone for assistance. You two should not be put at risk when there are trained—”

“Fiddlesticks,” argued Professor Holly, his chin jutting defiantly as he slung his rifle onto his shoulder. “Miss Bairstow and I are the only ones on cordial terms with Lady Law. We have a small measure of her confidence. It may be possible to trick her into a confession or at least catch her off guard. A police consignment would put her immediately on the defensive.

“Then there is the matter of evidence,” he went on. “We have mere supposition and not even a theory as to her methods. She has the body of a man plucked from a canal, from the scene of an attempted murder. In other words, as a police officer you must tread carefully. A wrongful arrest is all the licence she would need to bury your career, as well as her own transgressions.”

“You have a point there, sir. And given her unimpeachable reputation, the magistrate would be loath to issue any kind of warrant against her unless it was on solid grounds.”

Julia tugged at Al’s sleeve, glad he was seeing sense and not—horror of horrors—
barring them
from the main event. “Then it’s settled. We’ll take her on three-to-one, see if she can squirm out of
that.
”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to drop you off at the hotel, Julia?” Al countered as they stepped out into the cold evening. “This will be at best an unsavoury confrontation.”

“Will it, indeed,” she retorted, appalled that he’d even consider leaving her out of the finale.

He cast her a suspicious glare. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist—”

“No, you don’t, Constable! If this is unofficial, I’m afraid
I
have the right to insist. Georgy was my sister. And you’re going to need my help to untangle the web Lady Law will spin.”

After shaking his head he helped her up, and then let Holly into the police carriage.

“I say, it’s been a while since I rode in the back of one of these,” the professor admitted. “Didn’t much care for the destination then, either.”