The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (7 page)

How very elucidating.

(I hope that the kind reader recognises this as a despairing attempt at humour.)

I stared until my eyelids drooped—it must be remembered that I had by this time gone twenty-several hours with very little sleep or food—but my mind, normally nimble, remained inert.

Well, I thought finally, the placement of the double leaf at the end suggested that it might signal the completion of—what? A word? A sentence?

And the single leaf?

Perhaps another sort of divider—but that left only star and dot (as I had hazily begun to label the daisy and rose), and how could any message be conveyed in a mere two symbols?

Surely I must be missing something. The colours in the embroidery? The French knots? What if there were some variation in the French knots at the centres of the starflowers? Paper in hand, I got up and lurched to my bed where the ribbons still lay, bending over to peer at the tiny stitches by quite inadequate candlelight, for by now night had fallen.

Without conscious volition I did likewise, falling onto the bed, and asleep, all in a moment, still fully dressed and with . . * / . et cetera still in hand.

I SUPPOSE FLORRIE MUST HAVE COME IN BEFORE she went home, and, seeing the state of affairs and not wanting to disturb me, she had blown out the candles for the sake of safety. This to explain why, sometime during the night, I awoke to total darkness.

It was my complaining personage that awoke me, my middle regions knotted in such spasms of hunger as to veto sleep. Groaning, trying to remember who I was and what I was about, I sat up on my bed.

Then stiffened.

Something other than myself was groaning.

The house. Stealthy and frightening noises issued from it. There. CREAK.

Someone was creeping up the stairs.

Danger! cried my every nerve, for never had those steps complained so beneath Mrs. Tupper’s slight weight. I heard another creak as another person stepped on the same cantankerous board. There were two intruders; I could hear their footsteps as they felt their way upstairs in the dark.

It is amazing how quickly one’s wits, however weary, can react when sufficiently stimulated by terror. Instantly, and as silently as possible, I raked together with my fingers all the ribbons and papers that had lain along with my personage atop the counterpane of my bed. With this precious evidence in hand, I let myself softly down to the floor on the far side of the bed from the door of my chamber.

Just as I heard the turning of the knob, I crouched flat. Just as my door opened.

From my hiding place I could discern the spectral glimmer of a rushlight. I concentrated on remaining still, trying not even to breathe, as the intruders looked in.

“Bed’s still made up,” one of them said out loud, his deep voice giving evidence of Cockney origins. “Lodger flew the coop, by the looks of things.”

“Afraid of kidnappers, and very sensibly so,” said the other dryly. His accent, aristocratic in contrast to the first speaker’s, and his tenor voice seemed to match those of the man I had heard hailing a cab along Park Lane. “Well, as she’s not here, let’s have a couple of candles, shall we?”

They helped themselves to two of mine, lighting them with my matches, then exited the room, closing the door behind them.

I breathed out. Then, quickly but as noiselessly as possible, I got up from the floor, slipping off my shoes and laying them on the bed. Stocking-footed, I tiptoed to the door and listened.

They were in Mrs. Tupper’s chamber.

“. . . blue silk, with the big skirt such as my grand-mother used to wear,” the aristocratic one was saying in languid, faintly humourous tones, as if he were amused to find himself rummaging a poor old woman’s wardrobe. “This ought to be it.”

“Oughter, all right. Lemme slit the bottom open.”

For a considerable period of time (as befit the considerable circumference of the skirt’s hem) I heard the sounds of fabric being ripped by a knife. Slowly and softly at first but with increasing volume and variety, the man began to curse.

“Nuttin’!” he roared in summation.

“Nothing,” the other agreed, sounding more amused than otherwise. “The Grand Pooh-Bah will not be pleased. Did the carrier pigeon say it was in the hem?”

“The old lady? She’s no right pigeon, don’t know nuttin’, deaf as a potato, no sense to be got out of ’er. Bird gave ’er a dress is all we found out.”

“Well, might there be a paper or something hidden in these ruffles?”

More tearing sounds—that poor, ravaged dress! Mrs. Tupper had certainly been alive when she spoke of it to “the Grand Pooh-Bah,” whoever he might be, and that thought lightened my heart—but what might be happening to her?

“Nuttin’,” complained the thug again with an oath. “His Lordship is gonna say we cheesed it!”

At the time I thought that “His Lordship” was just another way they referred to the mysterious Mr. X, their leader, who seemed little loved by them.

The aristocratic voice had become bored. “Well, let’s take the dress back with us, shall we, and he can have a look for himself.”

“Right buffoons we’ll look, toting a blithering dress around!” the other grumbled.

“Well, you didn’t mind toting a blithering dress when the old lady was still inside it.”

“’At’s different.”

“In broad daylight.”

“Well, ’oo was to see us?”

“And who’s to see us now except drunks and hussies?” the other retorted as their footsteps strode towards me, passing my door and heading downstairs.

I, for one,
I thought, easing the door open a crack to catch a glimpse of them against the streetlit stair-well window. They passed it like shadow-puppets in a play, in profile, although one made small impression on me, for I recognised the other all too well—Classic Profile—and perversely, in that tense moment, my mind chose to remember where I had seen that silhouette before. I very nearly exclaimed aloud; good sense intervened just in time to keep me silent.

I did not, however, possess sufficient good sense to keep me where I was, in safety—not when there was a chance that, by following these men, I might find Mrs. Tupper.

The moment I heard them leave the house, I sprang into motion, pattering stocking-footed down the stairs and dashing to the door, opening it a crack to peep out. As the younger of the two intruders had implied, there was no traffic in the street at this time of night, but right in front of Mrs. Tupper’s humble abode waited a carriage, and even in the uncertain light of street-lamps and head-lamps, I could tell that it
was
a very nice little brougham, drawn by a slender hackney horse, and the wheels had yellow spokes. I saw no crest, but that did not mean there was none, for the door stood in shadow. For the same reason I could make little of the two men climbing in.

But my mission was not merely to spy. The moment they had closed themselves into the brougham, I shot out of Mrs. Tupper’s house, trusting and indeed praying that they did not look behind them.

In fictional accounts of derring-do, you see, the hero quite frequently hangs on to the back of a carriage and, enduring agonising cold, pain, or other rigours of personage, yet unperceived by the villains within, is eventually carried to the place where his lady-love is imprisoned.

Determined that Mrs. Tupper deserved no less of me, lifting my skirt—long skirts are a confounded nuisance when one needs to take action—I ran my fastest. The brougham rolled away, for the driver had started the horse, but that amiable creature had not yet broken into a trot when I flung myself at the back of the carriage—the rattling of its metal-sheathed wheels over ruts and stones serving, I hoped, to mask my impact—and swarmed up as if it were quite a wide tree I had to climb.

There like one of Darwin’s primates I clung. But there was nothing by which to hold on! My feet and fingers searched in vain for any projection or indentation, any ledge or luggage-rack which I might grip. Had I thought about it beforehand, I would have known I’d find none, for had the manufacturers of cabs and carriages put such accommodations on the backs of them, every street urchin and loiterer in London would have been availing himself of free transportation—but such thoughts came to me too late. Splayed like an overlarge dark spider on far too smooth a wall, I felt myself being dislodged a little more with the brougham’s every jounce.

Indeed, within less than a block I fell off, landing without dignity upon my posterior. My chagrin, as I sat in the filth of the street and watched the brougham roll away from me, can scarcely be described.

Ignoring several laughing “drunks and hussies,” in an exceedingly foul mood I got up and stalked home.

I spent what remained of the night forcing my outraged personage to accept some bread and cheese, having a wash, changing my dress for a similarly austere and scholarly costume of brown, then finally, at daylight, sitting down to struggle once again with the puzzle presented to me by the cryptic crinoline. But to no avail; dots and daisies made no sense to me.

I did, however, have one small remaining clue to pursue.

 

The earliest possible polite hour for social calling found me upon Florence Nightingale’s doorstep in Mayfair. This time it was the silk-gowned girl who admitted me without demur; apparently just about anyone could simply walk in here. Even at nine in the morning, I saw and heard as I entered, the drawing-room, dining-room, library, and so forth were well populated with visitors partaking of tea and scones, and already I saw “that young jackanapes” running upstairs with a note from somebody.

What a very odd household.

But I need not stay long today, I hoped. Straightaway I took myself to the front parlour—unpeopled during breakfast—where the walls were covered with portraits either painted, photographic, or scissored with exquisite precision from black paper, such being the venerable art of the silhouette.

I found the silhouette I recognised and looked up at it again. Most such cut-paper creations, like the upper-class beings they represent, tend to be a bit grotesque—all nose, or all chin, or both—but this one displayed perfectly proportioned, exceedingly pleasant features. And how often really
does
one see such classic symmetry? Yes, if it were at all possible to identify a person merely from his profile, I was about to do so.

Small, as were most silhouettes, the artwork hung above my reach. Gathering resolve by thinking of poor Mrs. Tupper, wherever she might be, boldly I betook myself to the dining-room, picked up a chair, and walked off with it. As I had hoped, in this peculiar house no one seemed to wonder what I was doing.

Positioning the chair, then clambering up to stand upon it, I lifted the silhouette off its hook. Climbing down again and sitting on the chair that had served as my stool, I turned my find over.

Yes. Yes, it was as I had hoped. On the brown paper backing of the frame, someone had pencilled the subject’s name.

It read,
The Honourable Sidney Whimbrel, at Embley, Summer 1853.

1853?

Thirty-six years ago?

This could not be my aristocratic villain after all. How very disappointing.

Where
was
Classic Profile today? I had not seen him following me at all. Of course, if he was thinking of me merely as Mrs. Tupper’s interfering lodger, having now concluded that I had fled to lodge elsewhere, he might have no further interest in me.

Whatever his original interest might have been.

And whoever he was.

So much for my ideas of identifying a person by means of a silhouette.

Sighing, I arose to return it to its place upon the wall, but just at that moment a group of chatting persons entered the parlour, and I lost my nerve, slipping the silhouette into an old leather satchel I had with me today, the sort of case in which a student might carry papers. I, however—as the capacity of my bust enhancer had limits—was using it to carry things I felt it would be unwise to leave behind at Mrs. Tupper’s house. Certain ribbons, for instance.

Exiting the parlour, I found myself facing the library, where the smiling yet redoubtable Mrs. Crowley held sway behind her desk.

It could do no harm, I realised, to have another go at Florence Nightingale, asking to speak with her. Indeed, I saw no other course of action before me. Yet I felt defeated in advance, as if no possible eloquence of mine could wring the favour of an interview from the Lady with the Lamp on high, and I experienced a leaden reluctance as I walked into the library in order to speak with Mrs. Crowley, compose a note, have it sent upstairs—

Blast and confound everything! Confound especially Florence Nightingale! What an utterly coddled, perverse, and cantankerous bossy-boots she must be! Her cumbersome procedure of communicating via the passing of notes was a culpable waste of time. If the woman had the means she seemed to possess, and if she insisted on being such a stubborn invalid that she could not be spoken with, yet kept her fingers inserted into so many reform-political pies, why, then, she should jolly well arrange to have notes whisked upstairs on little wires—or, no, she should make use of pneumatic tubes like the ones in shopping emporiums. Or, better yet—the absurdity of this thought offered me dark amusement—she should have a telegraph system installed. If Florence Nightingale insisted on lolling in her bed and sending messages downstairs as if from a great distance, why then, she should tap them out for a teletype machine, dit dit dah dah dit—

A shock of revelation appropriately electric in nature coursed through me, jolting me to a halt. “Ye gods in holey stockings,” I cried out loud. “Morse code!”

UNDERSTANDABLY, NUMEROUS HEADS TURNED. Doing my best to ignore them, with feverish haste, as befit the heat in my cheeks, I made towards the opposite wall of the library, where I spied upon the shelves the unmistakable stately ranks of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Seizing volume
M,
I seated myself at the nearest table—the people already there edged away from me, giving me plenty of room. With trembling hands I found the page: