“Unless your sister was brown and furry,” he said, “these are not her ashes.”
Chapter the Third
Miss Letitia Glover sat speechless and visibly struggling against tears, whether more of relief or of consternation I could not tell.
Sherlock strode past her, opened the front door, bellowed, “Mrs. Hudson, hot water!” then without another word disappeared into his bedroom.
I applied myself to comforting Miss Glover, pulling my chair closer to hers, passing her a dainty handkerchief scented with lavender, and attempting to say something kind while succeeding only in being blunt and awkward. “You are caught in such a muddle, you must feel as if your head might explode.”
Handkerchief to her face, Miss Glover nodded fervidly.
“Let us make a list, shall we, and see whether we can sort your problem out at all.” Turning to a fresh page of tablet paper, and reading each line aloud as I penciled it, I wrote:
Ashes are probably those of a large dog. Can we therefore assume Flossie is alive?
If so, why did Cadogan Rudcliff attempt to deceive his sister-in-law?
How many other people has he deceived, and again, why?
If he is involved in some plot involving his wife’s disappearance, what is its object?
How did his first wife meet her demise?
Where is Flossie and what has happened to her, if she still lives?
How can we find out?
I stared at that final question for some time.
Miss Glover surprised me by speaking up calmly. “I should write to Caddie—all too appropriate a nickname, as it begins to appear he truly is a cad.”
“But you will not yet betray that sentiment to him.”
“No, I will address him as ‘Dearest Caddie,’ and sign my name ‘Tish,’ and ask questions about my sister’s supposed demise, requesting details.”
“Excellent.” My brother’s voice turned our heads. Exiting his bedroom, he walked towards us, impeccably washed, shaven, combed, and dressed in a tweed suit for traveling. Standing over us, he bowed slightly to read the list in my lap, then nodded in cool approval. “How to find out is indeed the salient problem,” he said with no worse than his usual condescension, “as I must do so without exciting suspicion.”
“We,” I corrected him. If he thought he was going to take over this case just because it had gotten him up off the settee, he was sorely mistaken. “I take it you are going to Surrey? I intend to start in Belvidere.”
I am sure I puzzled him, for he turned to me with eyebrows raised, but before I could explain, Miss Glover spoke up in the manner of a shy person facing an unpleasant matter. “Mr. Holmes, your fee—”
He turned to her and made his most gracious bow. “I shall accept none, as I greeted you, or rather, failed to greet you, in so unmannerly a fashion when you came in. Your problem has features of interest, Miss Glover, and I will give it my fullest attention. Have you a photograph of your sister?”
Apparently she did, for she bent to reach into her reticule. This interlude gave me opportunity to rise, retrieve my gloves, and make for the door. “Sherlock,” I called back over my shoulder, “you may contact me through my club, and I will contact you through Mrs. Hudson. Au revoir!” Quitting the premises before he could argue, I ran down the stairs in high spirits.
* * *
A few hours later, looking quite the lady in a teal blue traveling outfit complete with tastefully matching hat, I exited the Belvidere train station and headed towards Basilwether Park at a brisk walk, breathing deeply in appreciation of air invisible to the eye, unlike that of London. Within moments I reached the long drive that led to Basilwether Hall, where I promenaded beneath a leafy archway of old lime trees, greatly enjoying their green-scented shade and my bucolic, sootless surroundings—
Half in a dream, I heard the soft thud of hooves on grass, yet noticed the sound only in afterthought, so to speak, when an elegant horse and rider cantered out from between the tree trunks directly in front of me. My presence caused the horse to shy violently, as horses will when they discover something unexpected beneath their long noses. The rider, to his credit, kept his seat and brought his mount to a swerving halt, facing me. His spotless jodhpurs and boots, cutaway jacket and silk topper almost disguised him as a tall, grown man, but not quite. He had shot up but not yet filled out since the last time I had seen him, a year before; I saw him to be all hands and elbows and sandy hair unruly beneath his hat.
Rather hotly, as was understandable, he challenged me, “Miss, what are you doing here, on private land?”
“Why, hello to you, too, Tewky.” And rather than giving him a maidenly simper, I grinned at him.
His jaw dropped, he leapt off of his horse, strode to me and shook my hand most warmly, all before he managed to speak. “You!” he gasped.
“Enola Holmes, at your service, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether.”
“So at last I get to know your name!”
“Indeed, Tewky.” I had concealed it previously only to evade my brothers. On the same day that I had run away from home, coincidentally Tewky had done the same and we had met most misfortunately, both of us bound hand and foot, captured for ransom by cutthroats.
“Don’t call me Tewky!” But he laughed out loud as he said it. “Still rocking the boat, aren’t you!” In my efforts to use my corset stays to cut the twine binding my wrists, I had quite literally rocked the boat in which we had been held prisoner. “And I can see that you are still masquerading as a grown-up.”
“As are you. Why are you not off at some exclusive boarding school?”
“I told my parents I would run away from any boarding school, so I have tutors.” He gave a whimsical smile. “They let me do much as I please, so long as I promise not to run away again. And you? Still gadding about with a small fortune taking the place of a bosom?”
He actually made me blush. “Lord Tewkesbury!” I protested.
“Please don’t mind. I am far too delighted to be proper. I never imagined I would ever see you again!” Looping one arm through his horse’s reins in order to lead it, he offered me the other arm like a gentleman. “What are you doing here, Enola?”
The way I took his arm was ladylike, but the way I answered was too candid for anyone’s usual lady. “I came in search of illuminating gossip.” I imagined my brother Sherlock was doing exactly the same by loitering in some Surrey pub, most likely impersonating a working man, with a beard on his face and a cap pulled down over his eyes, perhaps managing to steer the conversation towards skeletons in the closet of the Earl of Dunhench. Here at Basilwether Park, with my hand on Tewky’s arm, I was pursuing the same end in a different way. My previous acquaintance with Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether, and the camaraderie we had shared for a few days on the run after joining forces to escape the cutthroats, gave me an entrée into aristocratic gossip rather than that of gardeners and servants. It would be interesting to see which might prove more useful.
“Gossip!” Tewky exclaimed as we walked. “About whom?”
“Ah, that is exactly the problem. I must neither divulge that information nor let you guess it. Indeed, I must beg you to keep my nefarious purpose a secret.”
“Grand and dandy!” Still boyish despite the fact that he was now taller than I, he laughed again. “Enola, you are a brick.” And then, as we rounded a curve in the drive and Basilwether Hall came into view, he asked, “How long can you stay?”
“That depends.”
“On gossip? Wouldn’t you rather go horseback riding with me?”
* * *
I would far, far rather have gone horseback riding. But honour forbade. I was, first and foremost, a professional Perditorian. Just as my brother Sherlock bore the distinction of being the world’s first Private Consulting Detective, I titled myself the world’s first Scientific Perditorian—a finder of that which was lost. Having a client who was relying on me to find her sister—alive, it was to be hoped—
I turned my back on the seductive outdoors, mounted Basilwether Hall’s broad marble steps, advanced between Grecian pillars, and plied the heavy ram’s-head knocker on the massive front door. The butler who responded, expressionless as all of them were, nevertheless managed to look askance at my lack of a carriage or an accompanying footman. Showing me into a front parlour to wait, taking my card upon his silver tray, and disappearing with it into the depths of the mansion, surely he expected his mistress to be “not at home.” But I had written on the card a single enigmatic sentence: “We have met before.” Surely the duchess’s curiosity would prevail. And yes, the butler returned to show me in, revealing a certain inscrutable degree of astonishment.
The duchess awaited me in a conservatory/boudoir, its bay windows filled with potted plants, its furnishings luxurious, almost Persian. At first seated with dignity on a divan, the duchess gasped when she saw me and arose, hurrying towards me with open arms.
“Your Grace!” I exclaimed in protest, startled into an actual curtsy, which turned out to be an awkward manoeuvre in my modish skirt, narrow as was now the fashion. Her Grace, Tewkesbury’s mother, wore a flounced and gathered gown that artfully flouted fashion, as was the prerogative of a duchess. All of its colours and textures—pale blue moiré taffeta, blue-grey surah, lavender voile—conspired to compliment the smooth silver-white wings of her hair above her fair and surprisingly youthful face. I would not have recognized her as the woman I had glimpsed last year, a wild-haired woman running half mad, her face harrowed by tears of terror for her “kidnapped” son.
“I did not think you would remember me!” I blurted.
“Not very clearly,” she agreed cheerfully, sweeping me into her elegant arms, “but I know who you are, and what you have done for Tewky and me, and I could not be more delighted to meet you.” She released me from a surprisingly strong hug. “Please, sit down and tell me all about yourself.”
And so I did, over tea with marmalade tarts for the next couple of hours. But—gentle reader, please forgive me—a great deal of what I told her were fibs and fictions. I affirmed that I was the younger sister of the great Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first and only Private Consulting Detective—but, as Sherlock had never made public his birthplace and almost certainly never would, there was no risk in my telling her we came from Surrey. And I exalted our family onto the fringes of the peerage, titling our father as a knight, Sir Lucretius Adolphus Holmes, while my mother’s cousin was a baronet. I said I had gone to a boarding school, naming one so prestigious it served as a portal into high society. One of the alumnae … if only I could remember names … she had married an earl …
“The Earl of Dunhench, dear?”
Yes, I quite believed that was correct!
“Caddie Rudcliff. I’ve known him since he was in short pants, my dear Enola, and I must say he sowed his wild oats with the best of them, and there was a bit of a shadow over the marriage. The girl was Myzella Haskell of the St. John’s Haskells.”
Ah. I was to learn about one of Caddie’s earlier wives, not Flossie.
“Very respectable people, the Haskells, but quite scandalized, as were Caddie’s relations. I did not attend the wedding, for it was private.”
I blushed in genuine shock as I began to understand.
“But I heard she was quite lovely,” added Her Grace charitably, “and of course a man of such rank needn’t marry every girl he gets in trouble, so perhaps it was all right. She gave him two darling children, a girl and a boy, but most unfortunately they both expired, of diphtheria you know, and not long afterwards, she, also, passed away.”
I expressed consternation, noted that the loss of children to diphtheria is sad but commonplace—often it has been known to take a family’s entire brood—then inquired as to the cause of Myzella’s demise.
“I don’t know, dear, and I can’t at all understand why or how it should have been a scandal, but it was treated like one. There was no funeral. She was cremated, can you imagine?”
Chapter the Fourth
Late that night—of course I had been invited to stay for dinner, for the night, for as long as I liked—quite late, after everyone was asleep, I sallied forth from my appointed bedroom barefoot, in a borrowed nightgown grand enough for a princess, carrying a candle for light. Not much noisier than a stork, the bird of prey I most resembled, I stalked along a hallway with floorboards polished to such a shine that they reflected the glow of my candle flame, then down the lushly carpeted main stairway, and thus into the duchess’s library, not to be confused with the duke’s library on the opposite side of the hall. The duke, by the way, despite being a duke, had been quite pleasant to me at dinner. These were very posh people, to have more than one library. I wondered whether the duke’s was finer than his wife’s, and almost went to see, but managed to restrain myself, exhorting myself to attend to the business of being a Perditorian.
Lighting a gas lamp with a match from the cut-glass holder standing by, I opened the duchess’s rosewood rolltop desk and readily found her address book, a dainty volume covered in figured dimity and edged with scalloped lace. The duchess, I saw with approval, had kept it up to date, its alphabetized pages quite thick with tiny, formal handwriting almost as neat as engraving. Sitting at the desk to consult it, I started doing what would not have been polite while conversing with Her Grace: I took notes.
The address book provided me with full names, correctly spelt: Cadogan Burr Rudcliff number two in Roman numerals. Myzella Odilon Rudcliff née Haskell. Felicity Fay Rudcliff née Glover.
Then I started delving. Quite wanting to find out what, exactly, had happened to Myzella in case it might enlighten me concerning Flossie’s whereabouts, I wrote down names and addresses of all Haskells, taking special note of those who lived in and near St. John’s, very likely Myzella’s relatives, perhaps even her siblings. That finished, I went on to do the same regarding the Rudcliffs of Dunhench—
The library door opened.
I had not prepared an excuse for my being there, had not planned an escape route or a hiding place, had not even been listening for approaching footsteps, and I felt inexcusably stupid. The only intelligent thing I could do by way of compensation was to carry on as if I had every right to be copying names and addresses out of the duchess’s private records in the middle of the night. Therefore I managed—just barely—to keep myself from clutching my papers or jumping and squeaking like a frightened schoolgirl. I schooled my face into a merely inquiring expression before I looked up to see who had come in.
In a nightgown far plainer than mine, with his sandy-coloured hair wildly out of control, carrying a candle of his own, the duke’s son, heir, and only living scion stood over me.
Although not exactly glad to see him under the circumstances, still, I smiled. “Tewky!”
“Don’t call me that! What an absurd nightgown. You look like a giraffe in ruffles.”
“I quite agree, but it’s what your mother loaned me.”
“Couldn’t you sleep in it? What are you doing out of bed?”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“I came downstairs to stave off starvation by pilfering from the larder, and then I saw your light leaking under the library door. What are you pilfering?” He stepped closer, squinting at my notes, and to keep myself from guiltily hiding them from him, I put my hands in my lap.
“Myzella Rudcliff? I’ve heard that name,” he remarked. “The old ladies talk about her … Isn’t she the one who married Dunhench?” He would make as eager a gossip as his mother someday. “She was his first wife. She’s supposed to have died…”
How blunt, how brave, how modern of him to speak that forbidden word!
“… but there wasn’t any proper funeral—”
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t buried. The body was burned up or something. But the wagging tongues say really she didn’t die; she got taken away in a black barouche.”
“What does that mean?�
��
“Um, I don’t know.” He looked sheepish. “I thought you would.”
“I do not know, but I quite plan to find out.” Putting the address book away and folding my papers, I stood up. Speaking mostly to myself, I murmured, “I will need a pseudonym.”
“Ermintrude,” said Tewky promptly.
He spoke with such decision that, startled, I laughed out loud. “Whatever for?”
“Because you look like an Ermintrude. I haven’t any cousins. You can be my cousin, Ermintrude Basilwether. It rolls nicely off the tongue, do you not think so?”
I thought it was a mouthful. “Preposterous,” I said, then regretfully declined to join him in raiding the larder; I went back to bed.
* * *
Even though I could trust Tewky to keep my dubious nocturnal activities a secret, still, I left the next morning, bidding the duchess a gracious adieu and tendering my regrets while telling her that I had urgent business elsewhere. I hurried to Belvidere Station and boarded a train.
I was going to Surrey. But as London lay directly along the way, I stopped there, first at my club to change into fresh clothing—quite a nice day dress in oak-green velveteen with a grass-green faille overskirt gathered up into scallops. A hat trimmed with wired loops of green ribbon matched nicely. I packed a few things into a carpetbag, then inquired at the front desk whether there had been any communication from Sherlock, which there had not.
Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche Page 3