by Anna Elliott
“Ah.” I thought there was a very faint relaxing of Mr. Torrance’s tense posture before he nodded. “In that case, you ought to go to Seewald’s, in the high street. Mr. Seewald is our local pharmacist; he can see that you get whatever it is you need. Isn’t that right, Louise?”
“What?” Mrs. Torrance startled again, looking as though her husband’s voice had just roused her out of a happy dream. “Oh. Oh, yes. Mr. Seewald will take care of everything for you.”
“Excellent. If there’s nothing else, here is your key.” He handed a key over, then pressed a bell on the desk. A moment later a red-haired boy of around eleven appeared dressed in a bellboy’s uniform. “This is Bill. He will carry your bags up to your room.”
20. NEWS FROM A BELLBOY
Lincolnshire
Sunday, January 9, 1898
LUCY
Becky’s muffled voice pulled me out of sleep. “You’re—how old? Ten?”
My eyes snapped open, and I sat up with a jolt. Morning light streamed in through the chinks around the hotel room curtains. I was alone in the room; the small twin bed Becky had occupied the night before was empty.
Her voice was coming from the hall just outside the door.
“Or maybe even eleven?”
“Eleven and a half.” The voice that answered her was young, male, and more than slightly sulky-sounding.
Bill, I realized. The same bellboy who had carried our bags the night before.
“So what’s your point?” I obviously couldn’t see Bill, but he sounded as though he was probably scowling and folding his arms across his chest.
“My point—” Becky’s voice filtered through the doorway in near-perfect American tones “—is that you must have lost some of your baby teeth by now, and had the adult ones come in. Which means that if I knock out any of them, they’re not going to grow back.”
I jumped up out of bed, reaching for the dressing gown I’d left across the back of a chair and slipped it on as I went to the door.
I shouldn’t really have worried. When I opened the door, Bill was standing with his palms up in a gesture of surrender, his freckled, snub-nosed face looking more than slightly scared.
Somewhat comically, since he was a good six inches taller than Becky and probably outweighed her by twenty pounds. But to judge by the rumpled state of his gold braid-trimmed uniform, she’d already given him a demonstration of her skill in putting a much larger opponent on the ground.
I’d been giving her training in that area, too, in addition to speaking as though she’d been born across the Atlantic.
“All right, all right. Can’t blame a fellow for trying, can you?” Bill said.
I cleared my throat. “What’s going on?”
“Oh. There you are, Lucy.” Becky gave me a bright smile before gesturing to Bill. “This boy has something that he’d like to tell us about Cousin Alice. At first he thought that maybe he would try to charge us money for the information. But he’s thought better of that, now. Isn’t that right?”
Bill’s face blanched again. “Right. I mean, yes, miss.” He looked at me and swallowed, his tone an odd blend of nervousness and sullen defiance. “I don’t see what the fuss is all about, anyway. All I really know is that she was here.”
I tied the belt of my dressing gown, looking up and down the hall, which was as deserted as the hotel lobby had been the night before.
“Who was here? Alice?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Bill nodded his head. “Came here to look for a job, didn’t she?”
“When was that?”
Bill shrugged. “A month ago? Maybe three weeks?”
“And who did she speak to? Was it Mr. or Mrs. Torrance?”
“I dunno.” Bill shrugged again. “Never heard her say which of them she talked to. I just overheard her talking to Jane—she’s one of the housemaids—saying that she was hoping for a job, and wouldn’t it be a barrel of laughs if they were both working here.” His face wrinkled with scorn. “She was wrong about that, I can tell you. It’s dead boring here most of the time. Except when it’s a spa weekend, and then it’s ‘get this, fetch that, carry those bags there.’ Hop, hop, hop all day long and you don’t hardly get time to even eat or sleep.”
I breathed out, slowly. Bill struck me as the kind of witness who would clam up the moment he suspected that what he had to say was actually of any value.
Besides, Becky and I were supposed to be cousins of Alice Gordon’s, nothing more. We didn’t care about the running of the hotel.
“Spa weekends?” I made my voice sound casual. “That sounds exciting.”
Bill’s shoulders jerked in yet another shrug. “Only if you like fetching and carrying and getting yelled at by a lot of rich foreigners—”
Bill cut off speaking so abruptly it was as though the word had been snipped with a pair of scissors. His eyes went wide, focusing on something behind me.
“Sorry, Mr. Torrance.” He touched the edge of his bellboy’s cap. “Were you wanting me?”
Mr. Torrance was stumping down the hallway, his lips pinched at the edges, his brows drawn. “You’re supposed to be downstairs in the lobby, Bill.”
His voice wasn’t quite a growl, but Bill still swallowed visibly, his throat bobbing.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
He took off towards the elevator at the end of the hallway, almost at a run.
Mr. Torrance watched him a moment before turning to us, his face wreathed in a smile. “I do hope Bill wasn’t annoying you ladies?”
“Oh no, not at all.” My own smile was—I hoped—more convincing than Mr. Torrance’s, otherwise I deserved to be thrown off the London stage. “I just wanted to ask where the nearest telegraph office might be located.”
Actually I knew that already, since before coming to the hotel yesterday evening, I’d already found the local office and sent two telegrams: one to Jack and one to Holmes, telling them that Becky and I had arrived safely and where we could be found. I would have given almost anything to be able to actually speak to Jack, but Shellingford didn’t yet have long-distance telephone service that could reach all the way to London.
Mr. Torrance’s eyes narrowed just fractionally as he looked at me; then he nodded, his white-toothed smile flashing out again. “There is a telegraph office on the high street. Or if you prefer, you could hand whatever messages you wish to send in to me, and I will see that they are delivered.”
21. A DECISION
LUCY
“Mr. Torrance pretends to be nice,” Becky said. “But I don’t think he is. Not really.”
We were outside the hotel now, and walking along the town’s main street. A few crumbs of the raisin scones we’d purchased for breakfast at the local bakery still clung to Becky’s mittens.
Despite it being market hour, the street wasn’t busy. A few women with shopping baskets over their arms and shawls over their heads hurried past us, and the odd horse and cart clip-clopped down the cobblestones.
Shellingford wasn’t a large town by any means, and Becky and I had nearly traversed the whole of it in the half hour or so since we’d left The Grand. Apart from the hotel, there was a stationer’s shop, a butcher’s, a grocer’s, a tea room, and a few other assorted businesses.
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I told her.
Mr. Torrance’s disingenuous offer to take down any telegrams we wished to send might have been the same one he made to all hotel guests, but inasmuch as it would also allow him to read any telegrams I sent, it was an offer I would never accept.
“It’s not just Bill who’s scared of him, either,” Becky went on. “His wife acts as though she’s afraid of him, too.”
I nodded, remembering the way Mrs. Torrance had flinched at her husband’s touch.
Becky fell quiet for a moment, then glanced up at me. “You’re worrying about Jack, aren’t you?”
I sighed. This was the disadvantage of traveling with anyone as bright and observant as Becky; the
idea of trying to keep anything from her deserved to go into the dictionary under the heading exercise in futility.
“Yes,” I said honestly. “A bit.”
In addition to the bakery, we’d already stopped at the telegraph office and been informed that there had been only one reply to my messages sent the day before.
Holmes, with characteristic effusion, had sent back two words: message received. Jack hadn’t answered yet.
“But just because he hasn’t sent us a telegram doesn’t mean that anything is wrong,” I said.
To keep down the number of people who knew where Becky and I had gone—and thus who could tell Benjamin Davies or his lawyers—I’d sent the telegram to our house only, not to Scotland Yard. “It’s probably that Jack got called off to work on a case and just hasn’t had a chance to go home yet.”
Becky nodded, but the corners of her mouth drooped down. I was beginning to have an idea of what could be at the root of Alice Gordon’s disappearance. And the more I learned, the more I strongly disliked the direction all of this was leading.
I debated. Becky could use a distraction right now, and provided that we were careful, I couldn’t see any danger in the next logical step of the investigation.
“Come along,” I said. “Let’s go and visit the chemist’s shop.”
22. A DOMESTIC ALTERCATION
LUCY
Mr. Torrance was right: Seewald’s pharmacy was impossible to miss. A brick-built shop set on the far end of the high street from the hotel, it stood out as easily the largest and most modern of the shops in town. Even on this misty day, the plate glass windows were sparkling clean and filled with assorted goods: bottles of patent medicines, brightly-labeled jars of beauty creams and cosmetics, kid gloves and ribbons, ivory-handled shaving razors, hair nets and modern electric curling tongs.
Mr. Seewald, whoever he might be, was clearly doing a brisk trade.
Inside, Becky tripped off to look at the shelf that held big glass jars of candy, while I got into line in front of the counter.
Only one other customer was in the shop before us: a slender woman dressed in heavy black mourning clothes, her dark hair topped by a black velvet hat with a black lace demi-veil.
“… sorry to hear the headaches haven’t improved,” I heard the man behind the counter say.
There was a perceptible pause before the woman answered. “Headaches. Yes. Of course.” Her voice was low and husky, and her fingers clenched and unclenched on a black-edged handkerchief as she spoke. “Just give me the usual bottle of tonic quickly, Mr. Seewald. Please,” she added, clearly as an afterthought.
“Certainly, certainly.” Mr. Seewald looked less like a chemist and more like a lump of undercooked dough wearing clothes: big, pallid, and obese, his scant few strands of dark hair were combed, with rather pathetic optimism, over a mostly bald, domed head. His features were lost in rolls of fat, and the white apron he wore barely stretched over his girth.
He beamed at the female customer, his eyes nearly disappearing into heavy pouches of flesh.
“I have it right here.”
“Fine.” The woman’s hands clenched again, and she threw a quick, nervous glance over her shoulder at the main entrance. I caught sight of a thin, careworn face. “Just hurry.”
He turned to a shelf behind the counter, selected a brown bottle with a pink, flowered label, and handed it across to the woman, who almost snatched it out of his hands.
“Thank you.” She clutched the bottle in one hand and started to root through her handbag. “I know I have it. I know I have the money here—” She muttered the words under her breath.
The bell over the shop’s door chimed, and the woman jumped, letting out an audible gasp as she whirled to see who it was.
A young Chinese man stepped into the shop, glanced towards the counter, then moved to a display of shaving creams and brushes.
“Here.” The dark-haired woman flung a handful of coins onto the counter. “You can keep any extra change.”
Mr. Seewald didn’t seem at all discomposed by her hurry. His face creased in another smile and he started to pick up the coins the woman had dropped.
“Thank you, Mrs. Slade.”
The door to the shop opened again, and a broad-shouldered man wearing a police uniform strode through.
Mrs. Slade froze in the act of turning away from the counter.
For a moment, I thought she would bolt back behind the counter with Mr. Seewald. But then her chin lifted.
“What are you doing here, William?”
The uniformed officer was a heavyset man, more than six feet tall, with dark brown hair just beginning to turn gray at the temples and thin over his crown. He had a firm jaw, and his face was strong and weathered, with a ruddy complexion.
He looked hale, hearty, and as though he ought to be jolly, in a fatherly sort of way—except for his eyes. His eyes were dark brown, and held a kind of weighted sadness, even when he smiled. They were the eyes of a man who had been gutted by life and was struggling on, but was continuing to bleed on the inside.
His gaze darkened as he looked at Mrs. Slade. “I was looking for you. I heard—that is, I went to the house and you weren’t—”
Mrs. Slade interrupted, drawing herself straighter and folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I can’t even do some shopping without you spying on me, now? How did you even—” She stopped, the pitch of her voice rising with disbelief. “Have you sent Constable Meadows to—to watch me?”
She scrutinized the man—who had to be her husband—as she said it, and whatever she read in his expression seemed to give her an answer. “You have! William, how could you?”
Her husband glanced around at the rest of the shop, his expression creasing in discomfort. “Emily, this is hardly the time or the place—”
Bright spots of color had appeared in Mrs. Slade’s cheeks below the edge of her black net demi-veil. “Oh, and when is the right time or place, exactly, to discuss the fact that you’ve been spying on your wife as though I’m a common criminal?”
Pain tightened his expression. “You know it’s not like that. I’m worried for you, Emily.” His gaze focused on the dark brown glass bottle in her hands, and the line of his mouth flattened into a grim line. “With good reason, I see.”
“No!” Mrs. Slade stepped back, clutching the medicine bottle more tightly. “I need it, don’t you understand? It’s the only thing that helps. The only thing since—”
Her voice cracked. A moment ago, her whole body had been stiff with pent-up fury, but now she seemed to crumple, folding inwards. She covered her face and started to cry with deep, wrenching sobs.
“I know.” The same terrible, bone-deep pain and weariness I’d seen before were still visible in her husband’s expression. But he moved forward, putting a gentle arm around his wife and murmuring the words as one would to a child. “I know, Emily, I know. Come along, now. Come along home.”
Mrs. Slade didn’t resist as her husband drew her towards the door of the shop. Her shoulders still shook, but she was weeping quietly, now, as though the pain were too stark for further words.
Just as they reached the shop’s exit, though, the uniformed man looked over his shoulder at Mr. Seewald. I almost startled. I wouldn’t have been surprised by anger, but the look that Mrs. Slade’s husband directed in the chemist’s direction was filled with so much stark, naked hatred that I could almost see the intensity and violence of the emotion arcing through the air.
Mr. Seewald’s lips curved in a small, private smile. Then he focused his attention on me, his pudgy hands folded across his capacious middle.
“Now, miss, what may I help you with today?”
Since I had first joined Holmes in criminal investigation, I’d had to grow somewhat accustomed to bearing witness to the worst moments of other people’s lives: pain, fear, loss. And yet, after the scene between Mrs. Slade and her husband, I still felt as though I wanted to take a bath in scalding hot water just to was
h away the residual pain and tension.
Mr. Seewald, on the other hand, looked perfectly ready to pretend that nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred.
“Tooth powder, please.” I glanced at Becky, who was still eyeing the penny candy. “And a bag of the peppermint sticks.”
“Certainly, certainly.”
I lowered my voice. I was already resolved not to take any risks while I was in this shop, but after the scene we had just witnessed, not asking questions would almost be odder than asking them.
“Who were those people who just left?”
Mr. Seewald turned to his shelves and selected a tin of tooth powder. “Ah, the Slades. He’s the chief constable of the village and, of course, Mrs. Slade is his wife. They lost a child—a daughter—just over a year ago. A tragic case. Very sad.”
Mr. Seewald shook his head, his lips pursed in an appropriately sober expression, but his small eyes were sharp as he studied me. “If you don’t mind my asking, you’re not from around these parts, are you, miss?”
“Just visiting family.” I smiled. “I know it’s hardly the time of year for a visit to the seaside, but we’re only staying in England through the winter.”
“Ah, American, are you?” Mr. Seewald nodded. “Whereabouts are you from?”
“Milwaukee.” I’d never been to Wisconsin in my life, but it didn’t matter; in my experience—beyond having heard of New York and possibly Chicago—almost no one in Europe knew specifics of American geography. Whichever city I identified would be greeted with exactly the same look of polite, blank unfamiliarity.
Mr. Seewald was no exception. “Lovely, I’m sure.” He slid some peppermint sticks into a small brown paper bag. “There you are. That will be three and six.”
I took a breath. “There was just one other thing. I’ve been suffering from headaches, lately.” I touched my fingertips to my forehead. “Dreadfully painful ones, so bad that I can’t sleep at night. I was wondering whether you might have anything to suggest.”