The Mysterious Lady Law (2 page)

Later that evening…

The dank smog dampened Julia’s already dismal mood. It was thicker than the gallery haze she’d stared up at all evening from her chorus line. At least there had been elegance in that svelte mist of pipe and cigar smoke. Wealthy eyes had coveted her and opportunity nested in the hearts of those anonymous patrons. Sooner or later one of them would be standing outside the theatre, top hat doffed, and would ask her out to dinner. It had happened to half a dozen girls in the show over the last couple of years. Where were those girls now? Certainly not working the music hall, kicking their legs up for a pittance night after night, that was for sure. Susie Gaskell had eloped with her Prince Charming within a couple of weeks of his grand backstage entrance—five bouquets and a debonair-as-deuce invitation to Cleopatra’s ballroom restaurant. Nonie Maguire’s beau had snagged her for much less with a New Year’s Eve promenade walk, but he was flat-out gorgeous. Then there was Bernice Lowe, Edie Carmichael, the big-breasted girl—Laura something…

She glanced down at the shape of her own meagre bosom and shook her head. Maybe that was the reason she had so few discerning admirers. Or perhaps men didn’t care for the odd combination of her coal-black hair and turquoise eyes, traits from her mother’s Polish ancestry.

Her best friend Mariah was a traditional English beauty—brunette locks, winsome brown eyes, full figure—and she had shocked the entire chorus line tonight by announcing
her
engagement to a mystery beau, a young steamship officer whom she’d apparently been seeing for over a year without letting on to anyone, Julia included. Talk about fancy footwork! It was her last night as a dancer, as Mr. Sea Legs had vowed to make Ms. Hot Legs a respectable navy wife in his Portsmouth home.
Good luck
there,
chum.

But no luck for old Julia, left to walk home alone…yet again.

A steam-powered automobile spluttered by, its brass frame rattling down the cobblestone lane in front of The Swan’s marquee entrance. Julia glanced up the pavement. Her heart ached, then settled with that familiar, dampening malaise. Where was
her
man? The one she danced for every night and waited tables for on one of the grandest airships in London, with nary an afternoon to herself. The one she saw inside every lean silhouette, every accoutred carriage and the one she heard behind the hundred velvet voices wrapping her in shallow panache. He had to exist somewhere…

What she wouldn’t do for a bouquet of pink roses right now.

She tripped on the kerb and had to steady herself on the slick red postbox. Her left boot heel had broken. Marvellous. Another part of her life falling apart. The overgrown path between the post office and the ironmonger’s back fence was pitch-black. Probably muddy as heck after the evening’s rainfall. Beyond, white steam columned up from the arterial brass pipeline joining two aeronautics compounds. Decaux’s dirigible factories. As a girl, Julia had spent hours balancing barefoot on the brass pipe. Her younger sister Georgy had made them picnics to bring in the dead of winter, when sitting on that ever-warm piping would make it feel like summer. Of course, it would also turn chilled lemonade into undrinkable warm swill and something in the sickly steam fumes would mix with the winter air to give them sore throats and make them feel dizzy. But the pipe held many happy memories.

The urge to indulge one of those old reckless impulses left her feeling giddy. After negotiating the muddy path, she took off her boots and stockings, pulled her skirt and petticoats up by their flounces and leapt onto the brass cylinder. Its three-foot height had once seemed gargantuan. The warmth fizzed up through her and she shivered with delight. So this was what nostalgia felt like…anchorless, sublime, a tightrope walk over the past with no danger of falling. Her leg-of-mutton sleeves seemed to give her extra buoyancy as she held her arms out for balance. A boot in each hand, she walked the pipe with a grin on her face so wide the warm air tickled her gums.

“Oi, what you doin’?”

The bellowing voice startled her. Was it a security guard? The foreman working late? Lights flickered on in the gunmetal iron factory to her right. She leapt down from the pipe. After weighing her escape routes—back the way she came or deeper into the woods—Julia decided to brave the river path she hadn’t traversed in years. A pang of regret at having to cut short her adventure almost dispelled the magic. She lifted her skirts again and ran. Downhill and overgrown, the path kicked her into a reckless, exhilarating sprint lit by roving factory spotlights and moonlight jittering through evergreen treetops. Was anyone following her? Her foot sank into a freezing puddle. Laughing hard, she put her boots back on and kept to the soggy grass bank between path and trickling river.

Around fifteen minutes later, she stumbled onto lamp-lit Terry Street, a couple of hundred yards from her house. It had been an insane impromptu shortcut and the well-kept backstreets and lighting in the real world suddenly made her detour seem even more special, fantastical.

“All I need now is a posset, like Mother used to make,” she mumbled at the end of the row that led round to The Spinning Jenny pub. It was almost last orders according to the mechanized timepiece encased over the bar inside. Julia had never gotten home from The Swan as quickly without taking a hack. She bunched her shawl about her neck and delighted in the squelch her sodden boots made on the concrete.

Less than a mile away on the bank of the Thames, the Leviacrum’s enormous copper cylinder glinted back at her above the whorl-tipped hills of industrial smog. The vast, phallic telescope protruded from its roof. This headquarters of all scientific learning was one of the tallest buildings in London, thousands of feet high, and seemed to get taller every time she looked. These days, she rarely saw much else of London through the smog. She barely made out the docked airships’ bulbous silhouettes along the river and the tops of their grey metal elevator scaffolds, over a hundred feet high. They reminded her of work tomorrow morning and her second job as a dining room waitress-cum-hostess, a sky-hop.

A muddy flyer in the gutter advertising Great British Airships made her sigh. Its slogan had become the current Steam Age motto and appeared all across London. Ambition Soars. The World Is Yours.

“Pull the other one, eh, Purdy?” she said, stroking the next-door neighbour’s cat on her front step. She jiggled her key inside the lock. Georgy had promised to send for the locksmith…about five months ago. A perennial head-in-the-clouds, if Georgy spent half as much time seeing to their home as she did dangling beaus coquettishly on her every word and whim, 87 Freeborn Avenue would be a palace fit for Queen Victoria.

Inside stank of fresh mackerel and cheap perfume. Julia pinched her nose and shouted, “Disgusting, Georgy. If I had your sense of smell, I’d never leave the sty.” No answer, but Georgy’s corset and bustle lay over the back of her frayed cotton armchair, and the kitchen lamp was on. Julia slumped onto the couch. “Who stood who up? Paul, was it? Or Rupert? I forget. They’re all equally as doomed to torment. Georgy? I take it from your silence it didn’t end well. What did he say?” Still no reply. “Oh, come now, don’t tell me
you
were stood up.”

Julia’s fleeting satisfaction reminded her of that new word Mariah had come out with earlier. Her fiancé had taught it to her and it had repulsed everyone backstage.
Schadenfreude.
Feeling pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. She cringed at how despicable that made her. Georgy’s continued silence made her feel even more rotten.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle…It’s been a long day and I’m a tad cranky. Hey, did you ever make one of those possets, you know like Mother used to make us? I could rustle us up a couple if you want. I think I remember the recipe. Give me a hand?”

A very low crackle drifted in from the kitchen. Had the radio receiver broken?

She coughed and decided to get a glass of water. Still the receiver crackled. She glanced around the kitchen fully expecting to see Georgy propped on a stool against the worktop, reading one of her fashion magazines.

Not tonight. She must have gone to bed already, perhaps sozzled after one too many brandies to drown her sorrows.

Julia remembered the posset. Did they even have those same ingredients Mother used to use? Hot milk, cream and sugar, juice from two lemons, a dash of brandy? Would it taste the same with different brands? Maybe it was wiser just to make a hot chocolate instead.

She tripped…

Crack…slap!

Her shoulder smashed against the worktop and the palm of her right hand hit with full force on the tiled floor. Her fingertips smarted. A throbbing pain mushroomed up her neck as her head pulsed back to full awareness.

Georgy?

A pallid, tangled thing lay in a wedge under the table—blond locks and frothy layers of red-smeared undergarments folded up like vinegar-hardened cabbage. Legs outstretched, the stockings torn. One arm bent to an unnatural degree under the heap, the other covering a white face matted with bloody blond hair petrified to straw. It was a sight so alien, a thing so out of place, Julia muttered, “Georgy,” but could not join the image with the name. She sat and stared. The radio receiver crackled above, the odd distorted syllable escaping through a ceiling of flat nebulousness.

She kept hearing the word
posset
, but it was not Georgy’s voice.

The curtain over the sink had not been fully closed. One side gaped a few inches and for the briefest moment a person appeared in the back yard. The silhouette of a thin man dressed all in black. He appeared to be…peering in?

She saw his gloves and flat cap clearly, but she could not move, not even to remove her foot from the pool of blood.

Then came a knock at the door.

“Hello? Georgina, are you at home? Miss Julia? Is anyone there?” The man’s voice blared through the flap of the letter box and around the house like a foghorn. She vaguely recognized its cocksure tones.

“It’s Rupert,” he went on, losing patience. “I say, it doesn’t do to leave a fellow cooling his heels without some sort of explanation. Georgina, I know you’re in there. I see the lights. Let me in, darling. Whatever’s the matter? Well, I shan’t go until you at least answer.”

That last word pricked Julia’s heart—‘answer’—something her sister might never,
would
never do again. No more Georgy? Enough blood had pooled about her twisted body to steal life from a man twice her size, and now she, or what she had lately been, had to be someplace else. Not here in the kitchen.

No, not here. Not ever again.

She heard the squeaking hinge of the letter box, the spittle of radio static, Rupert’s insistent voice, “This is getting beyond the pale. Should I be worried?”

In her mind, her mother’s calmest words rang,
“How about I fix you both up a nice warm posset?”

Her stomach churned and squeezed upward, trying to spit the night’s sickening events out in a single horrific retch. She coughed and held her throat, then pressed a palm to her burning chest as the final realisation struck home.

She screamed until her larynx burned.

Thud, thud, crash!

Rupert burst in. Bracing himself against the kitchen door frame, his mouth agape beneath an impeccably waxed and trimmed black moustache, he blinked down at Georgy’s body. He wiped his mouth with a trembling shirt cuff. “Jesus. God Almighty. Oh Lord, what has she done?”

A lucid moment, as if beckoned in protest by her sister, roused Julia between heavy shakes. “What do you mean—‘what has
she
done?’” Rupert pivoted his head toward her, terror filling his gaze “Georgy never did anything to anyone,” she added, “so you can just
shut your goddamn mouth!
”

Barely acknowledging her, Rupert turned and staggered out. A chill draught tickled a few folds of Georgy’s ripped undergarments over her thigh. Julia grimaced and got up, skirted around the body and made straight for her place on the couch in the living room. Freezing air poured in through the smashed front door. She tucked herself into a ball and shivered. She reached for the old feather cushion and held it tightly between her knees, imagining the warm brass pipe she’d traversed barefoot that evening and the faint outlines of well-dressed Swan patrons high up in the gallery, admiring her dancing, wondering who she was and when she would be free, before plucking up the courage to ask her to dinner. She vaguely remembered it all happening…

Perhaps in a previous life, when it hadn’t been so cold.

The police arrived an hour later with a thousand questions and endless note-taking. The portly detective in charge muttered constant asides into his clockwork brass dicta-tape. The house had never been as busy, not even during Father’s union powwows on bank holidays. Every bobby in uniform offered her reassurance—“Don’t you worry, miss, it’s all over now—If there’s anything we can do—We’ll do everything we possibly can to catch whoever did this—You’re safe now, Miss…Barlow was it? Bairstow, I’m terribly sorry.”

But she felt neither safe nor at risk. Merely pending. Flanked by constables sitting on either side, Julia sank back into the soft couch and let her heavy eyelids close.

“There goes another investigation,” groaned a youngish-sounding man near the door. Julia kept her eyes shut and tried to imagine him—fresh-faced, slim, with striking blue-grey eyes and pianist fingers. A rogue in choirboy guise.

“I beg your pardon, Grant. This ain’t no public house. Kindly keep those impertinences under wraps.” Inspector Statham’s rebuke silenced the circus, at least for a moment.

“No disrespect, sir, but this is precisely why we end up kowtowing to Harriet Law more than we should. This whole area is a crime scene, not just the spot where the body was found. Lady Law’s case files have taught us that much. Check
all
the rooms, wake up all the neighbours, scour every last inch for boot marks, hair fibres, fingerprints. We’ve been embarrassed far too often recently, don’t you agree, sir?”

“Most emphatically not,” argued the inspector. “And anyway, all that is being taken care of. We have photographed the house, and…” he said in a lowered voice, “a postmortem examination will be more than sufficient after I am done here. Harriet Law be damned.”

“Indeed, sir. I was just concerned about all the thoroughfare passing through here. It rather muddies the evidence. But I’m sure you’ll need no help, sir. Might I offer to escort Miss Bairstow somewhere a little quieter, until this is all over?”

Julia opened her eyes in time to see the young constable approach her. She cleared her throat ready to answer him before he even spoke, so eager was she to get away from all the comings and goings, the questions—God, those endless questions. Rupert had done the smart thing and gone home after fetching the police. Now that Georgy’s body had been taken, Julia felt like a pariah in her own house.

“Miss Bairstow, if you’d like, we have a rather cosy rest area at the station. I can get the kitchen staff to rustle you up a snack and you’re welcome to all the quiet time you need. In the meantime, I will do my best to find you a guesthouse for the night.” He was older than she’d imagined—possibly thirty-five—and a stocky five foot six, with dark hair combed to a neat parting, eager brown eyes, and a kind face that she hadn’t expected. “Thank you, constable. That would be nice.”

He offered her his hand. How pleasant. And his courteous smile reassured her more than all the official platitudes she’d endured over the past few hours. Now she could look forward to a bit of calm—time to collect herself before she would have to come to terms with all this and…no, looking ahead never availed anyone of anything.

It was still dark outside when he helped her up onto the driver’s seat of his horse-drawn police carriage. He gave her a blue woolen blanket to keep her warm. It was big enough to wrap around her twice. During the half mile downhill trot to the station they passed three or four steam-chugging automobiles, one little Scottish terrier chasing its tail, and a shady fellow in a crooked top hat, whose fidgety behaviour started and ended with flickers of lamplight from a terrace window opposite, undoubtedly signals from a brother burglar. Grant whispered, “It’s quite alright, miss. One of the lads noticed them earlier. They’ll have a nasty surprise when they make a move. We have two men waiting front and back.”

“Good.”

“That’s us, miss. Early birds all through the night. Always on the watch. Always there when you need us.”

“Not always, constable.”

No response.

It was one thing for a policeman to criticise his colleagues’ shortcomings tonight and quite another for him to boast on their behalf. “I won’t be needing anything to eat,” she said, remembering his offer. “I may ask for a mug of hot chocolate, though. Do you have that there? You should have that there. That would be pleasant.”

“I’ll ask the night staff, miss.”

“Very kind.”

He briefly placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. The gesture took her by surprise, and eased through her toughest defences. Its gentleness spoke of a night that was, not the one she was stubbornly clinging to. Georgy had never hidden from emotion in her life. She would have said, “People in denial are acting the goat. It’s like picking your own pocket. Face facts, Jules, you’re not on stage. There are no encores for us now, no curtain calls in an empty theatre. There you go, just let it out.” Julia buried her face in the blanket and, in the muffled
clickety-clop
of hooves and wheels on cobblestone, gave in to bitter sobs.

“I’d lend you my handkerchief if I had one,” Georgy might have said.

He touched her shoulder again, but this time his hand trembled. His eyes were glazed as he glanced at her and then looked away, as if he had personal knowledge of this kind of pain. What had happened to him? She held his hand against her shoulder and hoped it wouldn’t leave.

***

Brrrrrring, brrrrrring…

Holly woke and lifted his head with a start. How long had the telephone been ringing? After the ceremony he’d drifted to sleep at his writing desk again and a sheet of paper, damp with saliva, had stuck to his face. He ripped it free and reached across the desk, knocking a tube of pencils and his brass telescopic hunting goggles onto the carpet.

“
Goddamn it.
I’m awake already.” He picked up the receiver. “Holly. Who is this?”

“Professor Holly, it’s Josh Cavendish. I need your help!”

“Eh?” It had to be something serious. Young Josh, his protégé, was a private lad, very discreet and one of the most promising young physicists in London. He had never disturbed Holly so late before, nor had he ever sounded so panicked.

“Sir, I don’t have much time. This is a public phone. I think I’m being followed. Oh God, he’s here. Before he sees me…please, Professor, in about twenty seconds I’m going to have to make a run for it…you have do something for me.”

Holly wanted to say, “Slow down, son. Give it to me from the top,” but time was against him. His forefinger squeaked across the brass receiver. “What is it, boy?” he urged.

“I saw an astounding thing, Professor. Something I can’t explain. I dare say it could change science forever. But whoever is behind it doesn’t want the world to know. God, he’s here! Go to 87 Freeborn Avenue and look after Georgina for me. In case I don’t make it, she’ll know where to send you. Please…Ah, hell. Goodbye, Professor.”

“Josh? Hello, Josh?”

Silence.

Lamplight illuminated one quarter of his study. In the surrounding shadows, mystery reigned. What had the youngster gotten himself into? What had he seen? Something astounding? Scientific? Deadly? All of the above? Was this the reason he’d missed the ceremony?

Holly dashed into the hallway and grabbed his boots, coat and hat. He repeated the name and address aloud, over and over, “Georgina, 87 Freeborn Avenue.” Who was she? Josh’s girl? He hadn’t let on that he had one. Not that Holly would expect him to. The lad was as reserved as they came, but damn good in the field, in a tricky spot. Their last African expedition had proved that. He had accompanied Holly on a field trip to Sossusvlei, Namibia, in search of the rare Scimitar Oryx. One evening en route, Josh had managed to pip a charging rogue lion in their camp when everyone else had either frozen or run, Holly included.

Once upon a time, Horace Holly would have felled any dangerous animal, of any size and with any rifle. But killing one’s own nephew, accidentally or no, tended to shake a man’s marksmanship to the core. He shuddered at the bitter memory—little Stuart’s fifteen-year-old, khaki-clad frame dashing across his line of fire on the hazy savannah; the world-ending retort; the horror zapping from Holly’s trigger finger straight through his brass goggles to his heart; the tiny spray of blood; the puff of dust enveloping his crumpled nephew.

He’d sworn never to fire a weapon again and had kept that vow.

But Josh was in trouble. He’d have to do whatever it took, including…No, anything but that. He ran back into his study and rummaged around in his stationery drawer for the key to his display cabinet. Where was the damn thing? There! No, he’d picked up an old spanner head.

“Sod this.” He grabbed his Cambridge cricket bat and swung at the glass case. It smashed. He snatched his six-inch hunting knife, still in its leather sheath, from beneath the shards, then ran out, crashed the door shut behind him.

The street was empty. Freeborn Avenue was less than half a mile away.

“Be at home, Georgina,” he urged, “whoever you are.”

One week later…

“Miss Bairstow, I’m afraid I have some bad news.” Grant bowed his head a little and hunched his shoulders as he stood at the doorway to her hotel room. “May I come in?”

Julia opened the door and attempted to smile.

“You might prefer to sit down,” he added, “before I explain the details of our investigation.”

“Please proceed.” She had no intention of sitting. The weeklong wait for this news had been an ordeal. Grant had been kind enough to attend Georgy’s funeral and Julia would never forget that. He’d also updated her as often as he could, but, being only a senior constable, he had had to wait until the inspector in charge had fed him that information. Her sedentary few days now had a solid ending, at least.

“Well I shan’t beat about the bush, Miss Bairstow.”

“Julia. Please.”

“My apologies. Julia.” His eyes narrowed, heavy under a wrinkled, officious brow. “It’s just that Inspector Statham told me I should feed you some cock and bull story about following up leads and collating evidence…you know, to make you think we’re making headway.” His fingertips played a nervous melody on the brim of the hat he held at his waist. “But the truth is—”

“You’re getting nowhere?”

“I’m afraid not. Whoever killed your sister managed to get in without breaking a single lock or window, left no fingerprints and escaped without being seen or heard by anyone. Your sister must have put up quite a struggle, though. We found broken crockery on the floor, dents and scuff marks on the cupboards and traces of her hair were found all over the kitchen. Our best guess is she opened the front door to someone who then fought his way in—you don’t have a chain—”

“We never got around to paying a locksmith.”

“I doubt if that would have stopped him at any cost. Georgina tried to escape the back way and that’s where the real struggle took place. Like I said, she fought bravely but the intruder knew what he was doing. Her knife wounds suggest this person had killed before.”

“How so?” She kept her focus on his cool performance, his masculine, understated body language—he stood solidly and averted his eyes only at the most grisly words. Watching him helped deflect from the awful images her mind played out in sickening detail, over and over until she saw exactly how her sister was murdered.