“Mrs. Somerville is gone,” said Ada in hushed tones.
“What? When? Why?”
“Exactly. I don’t know if I can do this,” said Ada.
“Do what, dear Ada?” asked Mary, concerned.
“Sisters. Yours. Mine. Them. All of it.”
“They do make matters rather less…clandestine,” Mary agreed.
“It took me all afternoon to get four facts from Lizzie. Jane won’t stop interrupting with all her Society blather, and Allegra…I want to shoot her out of a cannon.”
“I think she’d rather enjoy that, to be honest,” said Mary.
“She probably would. It’ll be her birthday present.”
Mary watched Ada’s frown turn into a modest smile at the thought of it, then took her hand.
Mary’s eyes widened at Ada in a silent sssh! as Lizzie approached. Jane and Allegra had moved on from snapdragons and had procured a deck of playing cards from somewhere.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to intrude,” said Lizzie. “I wanted to speak with Lady Ada, if that’s all right.”
“Certainly,” said Mary politely, who curtsied before joining the others.
Ada paused for a heartbeat, then blurted, “The announcement.”
“I’m sorry?” said Lizzie, confused.
“Your father was going to make some happy announcement, but then he died. Do you know what it was?”
“No idea, I’m afraid. He didn’t even tell me he was going to make one. It seems he sent out letters to the rest of the family but was keeping it as a surprise for me. I will say, though, in his final days he seemed…”
“Yes?”
“Grim. Troubled. I don’t know. And then the—” Lizzie paused, the sadness she had set aside for the day returning.
Ada wondered what Mary would say. “I’m sorry,” she said. That seemed right.
“You must think me awfully silly.”
“Well, not awfully,” admitted Ada.
“That’s just it. I’m not silly at all. You’ve just caught me having a bit of fun, the first fun I’ve had in ages. It’s because you’re here that I can relax. I’ve been ever so worried.”
“About the money, you mean.”
“Yes. It makes absolutely no sense to sign away the money now when he’ll get it after our wedding.”
“Unless there won’t be one,” said Ada.
“Exactly. If he was so desperate for funds, why not just move up the marriage? We could have the parson around in an afternoon. Oh, I know it wouldn’t be a proper Society wedding, but it would be perfectly fine nonetheless. But no, something’s up, and I don’t need to have Mrs. Somerville’s brains to see it.”
“No,” said Ada. “You’re not silly.”
“And neither are you, so you know the next thing I’m going to say.”
“Bubbleburst.”
“Brocklehurst, but yes,” said Lizzie.
“You think Sir Caleb may be an almost-dog-kicker, but he’s more of a kicked dog, and not clever enough to be up to anything on his own.” On saying this, Ada realized she might have gone too far. Lizzie graciously let it slip by.
“It was Mr. Brocklehurst who brought Sir Caleb into our lives. Brocklehurst had some business with Sir Caleb in Jamaica and brought him to my uncle’s attention,” she explained. “This is all some scheme of Brocklehurst’s, I’m sure of it. Otherwise Sir Caleb would have asked me himself.”
“And would you have signed?” asked Ada.
“Likely not. I’m still quite sure Father would not have approved the irregularity.”
“I’ve realized two things,” said Ada, thinking.
“What’s that?” asked Lizzie.
“First, it’s a lot easier to work on this case without all these sisters about.”
“Indeed,” said Lizzie, composing herself. “And the second?”
“You’re really not silly at all.”
An hour later, the girls, once again caped and bonneted, waited for the carriage as it was brought around to the front of the stately home.
Ada looked out across the grounds, to see a grey stone building nestled against the trees where the forest began.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Father,” said Lizzie. “And Mother, next to him.”
“What are they doing over there?” said Allegra. “I thought they were dead.”
“They are,” said Mary quickly. “It’s a mausoleum. A family vault.” There was no sign of recognition from Allegra, so Mary added: “A stone house for dead people.”
“A crypt,” said Ada. “Well, I guess that makes sense,” although she secretly thought it a waste of a good stone house if you were just going to put dead people in it. As far as Ada imagined, dead people didn’t really care where you put them. But she admitted to herself she really had no way of being sure. She realized she was tired.
Goodbyes were dispensed, and despite the whole visit being less than ideally clandestine, all the girls really had seemed to enjoy themselves. Despite oddness and interruptions, Ada had the facts of the case, had met all the variables, and had found something of an ally in Lizzie.
Jane and Allegra both fell asleep with the bump and sway of the carriage, and Ada was tempted to join them in slumber.
At that moment, she desperately missed her balloon. Its creak and sway, its privacy and solitude, its view of Marylebone all the way to the park, down the nooks and alleyways behind Baker Street. While she could visit the roof, with its now-vacant network of chimneys and pipes and tackle blocks, the view would seem somehow less hers, less magical.
Ada sighed.
“The Peloponnesian War!” said Peebs with a grin.
The girls’ tutor, making up for his students’ day off the day before, hoped his enthusiasm for the subject would radiate through the drawing room.
Four girls blinked audibly. Mary was at least blinking with a degree of interest, and Jane was blinking uncharacteristically quickly, as though trying to force an interest that really wasn’t there. But Ada was blinking “Why are you even attempting to teach us while we are in the middle of a serious case?” before returning to her newspaper, and Allegra was blinking “What are these words coming out of your face?”
“Come now,” implored Peebs. “Athens? Sparta? Democracy versus rule by the few, the end of the Golden Age of Greece?”
There was still no biting this particular hook. He tried once more in vain.
“It changed the map of the ancient world!”
Had there been crickets, Peebs could have heard them.
Ada didn’t look up from her newspaper, but said, “How do you feel about…hunting ghosts?”
“I beg your pardon, Lady Ada?”
“The Times. This morning. ‘Constabulary continues to seek escaped lunatic from College of Physicians hospital.’ That’s Mary’s ghost, I imagine.”
“That could explain the young lady’s peculiar manner,” admitted Mary, perking up. “Do you think this is at all related to Mrs. Somerville’s case?”
“I can’t see how, but it could put to rest one of the variables, at least.”
“I suppose the Peloponnesian War will still be there when we return,” said an only slightly miffed Peebs.
“A safe enough supposition, Peebs,” agreed Ada.
An hour later, Mary, Jane, Allegra, Peebs, and Charles (who had been reclaimed from the boot-polish factory by paying a goodly sum to the foreman to give him the day off), found themselves in the well-manicured wilds of Regent’s Park, behind the College of Physicians. Here, nature behaved itself. The trees had the decency to be all the same height, and the hedges were passable if you went about them the right way, with paths cut in on at-first-invisible angles to allow for the transit of gardeners.
Ada had given them all areas to search: Jane, Allegra, and Mary were to head northwest—a stroll of girls in the park was a rare unescorted opportunity; Peebs and Charles would cover the southeast part of the park and walk toward the center. Ada
herself remained at the Byron house, fuming over her lack of balloon to oversee the whole affair. While she thought the connection between Mary’s ghost and the Earnshaw case was tenuous, she trusted Mary’s instincts. Besides which, she was grateful for the solitude.
“What, exactly, are we doing here?” asked Peebs.
“You know what I know,” said Charles. “We’re hunting a ghost. Or rather, a girl.”
“And were you given more of a complete description of said ghost girl than was I?”
“Girl. Grey. Ghostly. Wet,” answered Charles.
“Well, it’s not raining, so that narrows it down to ‘grey,’ ‘ghostly,’ and ‘girl.’ ”
“Auburn hair, Miss Mary said,” Charles added.
“Did she? That’s rather specific.”
“Auburn is a sort of red.”
“I’ll have you know, young Master Dickens, that I’m quite in possession of the definition of ‘auburn,’ ” said Peebs crossly.
“All right. Not everyone reads books, you know.”
“That is an unfortunate truth.”
“You wouldn’t have read a book on ghost catching? Girl catching, if it comes down to it?”
“No,” admitted Peebs, “although I suspect it would be ungentlemanly to write one.”
“An escaped lunatic, Lady Ada said. Or rather the Times said,” said Charles, making conversation. “Dangerous?”
“I suspect not, Master Dickens. I myself have given over to lunacy on more than one occasion.”
After a lull, and a valiant search of a willow grove, Peebs resumed the conversation.
“And what is it, Master Dickens, that occupies you, if I may ask? Do you attend school?”
“No, sir,” said Charles. “And seeing as we’re together in this expedition, you should call me Charles.”
“Charles, then. And I shall be Peebs, I imagine, as no doubt Lady Ada would wish it so. So, Charles, if not school, then how do you spend your days?”
“Boot-polish factory,” said Charles, poking a suspicious hedge with a stick. “I glue the labels on.”
“Ah,” said Peebs. “That sounds rather…um.”
“It is.”
Charles stopped along the path. From the pocket of his woolen jacket he drew a small glass jar, like an inkpot, with a large cork stopper. He bent down to scoop up a small sampling of earth from beside the path.
“May I inquire…,” Peebs began.
“It’s for Ada. Lady Ada. She asked me to collect dirt from all over London. Been doing it for a week now and just remembered that I haven’t got this bit yet.”
“Dirt? From all over the city?”
“She’s sorting it, she says. Making a dirt map, so she can learn what color dirt comes from where.”
“I hadn’t observed dirt being in different colors,” Peebs mused. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. When I was on the continent, I had noticed the tones of the earth were markedly different there. But I imagined all English soil must be, well, English. Let alone distinctions within the city.”
“I hadn’t given it any thought either,” agreed Charles. “But collecting these, I find there’s all kinds of differences. Brown to black, sandy or muddy—it’s quite beautiful, actually, once you start looking.”
“I think that’s marvelous,” said Peebs. “It’s quite the rage for young ladies to paint flowers, of course, or any kind of foliage, really. But our Lady Ada seems to be on a tangent of natural history entirely her own. Not that it’s of much help to us in our current expedition.”
“Later, perhaps,” said a resigned Charles.
Peebs sighed. He was not overly optimistic about their mission, but he could see the logic in such a search. The day was pleasant enough for the time of year. Temporarily not raining, anyway. They continued along the path and continued in the not-finding of ghost girls. The grey sky took up the drizzle again, as dampness gave way to moistness and played with the fringes of wet. Charles and Peebs, footsore from gravel paths, admitted defeat, despite their reluctance to disappoint Mary. But there was nothing for it. Too much park, not enough ghost.
It might have been the subject, or it might have been his imagination, but a sudden chill took Charles, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He had the distinct sense of being stared at, though as he spun around, there was no one there to be seen.
Later that evening, after the disappointed ghost hunters had returned to the Byron house, and after an (actually) interesting lecture on the Peloponnesian War, Mary and Jane returned to their home in the Polygon building in Clarendon Square, Somers Town. The Polygon was a star-shaped building broken up into many apartments, and the star parts that belonged to the Godwin family were cozy parts, bookish parts, comfy-cluttered-homey parts, and good-smelling-bread-and-butter-and-cinnamony parts.
The girls set themselves to chores and chatted with their older sister, Fanny, about her day, and helped Mama with the baby, which Mary preferred, or with dinner, which fell to Jane.
Mrs. Godwin—Jane’s mother and Fanny and Mary’s stepmother—was the most accomplished publisher of children’s literature in all of London, but there in the steaming kitchen, flour on her sleeves and butter on her apron, she was more like a general commanding an army of obedient courses, with stacks of plates standing at attention.
“Mary!” called Mrs. Godwin from the kitchen, her French accent poking through when she stressed the ee rather than the mare. “Wash your face and fix your hair, child. A Mr. Hazzlit is coming for dinner.”
It was the “a” that gave Mary pause. She was at a particular age: When an individual gentleman visited a home with a girl in it, and that girl was going to be sixteen at some point in the near-enough future, there was an expected sizing up or at least a looking over. As Jane was only twelve, and Fanny was spoken for, that left Mary at fourteen in the spyglass from a ways off. The whole thing gave Mary butterflies. Not pleasant spring-day butterflies either, of saffron and scarlet, but greenish-grey queasy ones that fluttered about her tummy. Their current case was not making the prospect of marriage look any more appealing.
Mercifully, this particular Mr. Hazzlit was practically ancient, forty something, although not as old as Mary’s father. To be fair, Mary thought that in his day this Mr. Hazzlit must have been handsome enough. And his manner was sort of clever and vaguely grumpy at the same time, which Mary found amusing.
Jane at once prodded the poor gentleman to see if he was of interest but, on discovering that he was a mere journalist, quickly decided he was not. Her interest was piqued when their dinner guest let slip some name or other from Society with which Jane was familiar, and she shook the man like a terrier’s rat until he let loose any crumb of scandal he could possibly spill.
“And do you write of the palace, Mr. Hazzlit?” Jane asked breathlessly.
“Alas, no, Miss Godwin. I confess I haven’t the stomach for it. These days I restrict my reporting to the goings-on in the countryside and the waverings of my own moral compass.”
“Our Lady Ada’s been to the palace loads of times,” continued Jane, ignoring Mr. Hazzlit. Mary wondered when her friend Ada had become “our” as far as Jane was concerned. “She positively hates it. She finds herself so anxious among strangers that the thought of being at this table would send her trembling under it.”
“Jane!” said Mary angrily.
“Now don’t gossip so,” said Mr. Godwin kindly. Mary’s father did everything kindly; he had a kind face with kind eyes that sparkled when he spoke, and even his odd, blobby nose had a kindness to it that made it irresistible to babies, who liked to pull on it, at which the kind Mr. Godwin would laugh heartily.
The conversation took an adult turn onto the price of things, of stingy magazines and their reluctance to cover the modest and perfectly reasonable expenses of writers with regard to such things as jaunts to Italy.
“You should get yourself a patron, my dear Hazzlit!” said Mr. Godwin. “Were it not for the generous co
ntribution of Mr. Shelley, we’d be poor as church mice, and the presses at MJ Godwin should grind to an unprofitable halt!”
“ ‘Mr. Shelley,’ did you say, Papa?” asked Mary.
“No need to concern yourself with such things, my child,” assured Mr. Godwin.
“Are you saying that my tutor, Mr. Shelley, is our family’s patron?” Mary felt she had a right to know, although she couldn’t say where either the feeling or the right had come from.
“He has been an admirer of my work, and your mother’s,” said Mr. Godwin.
“He…he has mentioned that,” acknowledged Mary, remembering their first meeting in the foyer of the Byron house.
“Well, then, no more needs be said,” said Mr. Godwin. Of course Jane ignored him.
“I do wonder if our Mr. Shelley is someone,” she said. “I never thought to check.”
“Of course he’s someone,” insisted Mary. “Everyone is someone.”
“I meant—” Jane began.
“I know what you meant. Someone in your book. Burke’s Peerage and Sneerage. Well, I’m not in your book—does that mean I’m not someone?”
“Girls!” said Mrs. Godwin sharply. “This is neither a suitable conversation nor a tone for the table.”
Chastised, the girls nodded a yes-Mama, and Mr. Hazzlit distracted them all by fluttering his fingers through the candle flame slowly without getting burned.
“I say, that’s awfully clever,” said Mary, holding baby Charles’s reaching arms away from the fire.
“Candles are fascinating, you know,” said Mr. Hazzlit. “There’s an entire secret language about them.”
Mary had her usual reaction to the word “secret,” which is that it made her at once ferocious and invincible and feeling clever and in all ways marvelous. “A secret language! Please do tell.”
“Well.” Mr. Hazzlit, a natural storyteller, leaned in toward the flame. “They say that if the tip of the wick glows like a coal, that’s called a ‘sweetheart’ and it means your true love is near.”
Mary and Jane peered forward, but it seemed not to be the case. Mary felt slightly better about that, despite the vast gap between Mr. Hazzlit’s age and her own.
The Case of the Girl in Grey Page 4