The Case of the Girl in Grey

by Jordan Stratford

Lizzie leaned in, her hand to her chest. Here she was at her father’s grave and felt both sad and anxious. Only her curiosity, and her marvel at Ada’s, kept her from returning to the faint light of the garden.

  “Look, see?” continued Ada. “This one here is Greek. A gamma, a Greek G, that looks like an upside-down L. And here at the end is a sigma, which looks sort of like an E.”

  “I’m sorry, why is that…?”

  “Well, you don’t usually see Greek letters mixed up in Roman numerals. In fact I’m sure you never see it. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Would you mind terribly if we returned to the house?” Lizzie was feeling too sad, and missing her father too terribly much, to stand there any longer.

  “Of course,” said Ada, seeing her new friend’s sadness, and feeling a tiny bit pleased with herself that she had managed to notice.

  As Ada stood, some motion caught her eye. When she looked up, she could see a tarnishing silver mirror set into the ceiling, overlooking the two graves. As she peered up, she saw her own reflection, staring down at her against the engraved stone floor.

  Ada usually ate dinner alone. Alone with a book. She sat down and read a few pages, and when she looked up again, there was always a plate of hot food, which sometimes she would devour like an animal, if the book was exciting, or poke at absently with a fork, if it was getting to a dull bit. Recently she’d been eating with Allegra, whose table manners were scarcely better than her own. And of course she often had tea with the rest of the Wollstonecraft girls, whose manners were far more proper. Still, this was her first dinner “out,” as it were, and she was a bit nervous. Jane would expect her to make some sort of impression, or at least make an effort not to embarrass herself too much.

  “Jamaica,” said Ada, interrupting Sir Caleb and Mr. Brocklehurst, who were murmuring at the far end of the table.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Sir Caleb.

  “Jamaica. I understand you have business there. What sort?” she asked.

  “Sheep!” said Sir Caleb, at exactly the same moment Mr. Brocklehurst said, “Sugar!” just as loudly.

  “Err, yes,” continued Sir Caleb. “Sugar. I meant to say that. No sheep in Jamaica. Too hot, you see, for the, um, because of their, um, sweaters.”

  “Do sheep wear sweaters?” asked Ada.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m in the sugar business.”

  “It’s just,” said Ada, “that you did just say ‘sheep’ when I asked you.”

  “It’s the shushes. Sheep, sugar. Must be how the sound travels in the room. Erm.” Sir Caleb quickly reached for a glass of water.

  “It must be very interesting, sugar, in Jamaica,” said Ada as innocently as she could muster. “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Oh, it’s, um, it’s very difficult,” stammered Sir Caleb. “You have to watch out for, um, erm, difficulties.”

  “I’m sure, Lady Ada,” slithered Mr. Brocklehurst, his coarse accent grating on the finery of his words, “that the intricacies of commerce must be of little interest to a little girl. Shall we have some pudding?”

  Ada did like pudding, but she did not like the fact that Sir Caleb was unable to answer any of her questions, and that Mr. Brocklehurst wouldn’t let him even if he could.

  As Mr. Brocklehurst reached for his glass, Ada saw a flash of ink beneath his shirt cuff.

  A tattoo.

  A single letter. S. And she knew at once where she had seen such a tattoo before.

  She nearly gasped but covered it with a fake cough. She pretended she had seen nothing, and she was very, very bad at this. Desperately, her mind rummaged through drawers in her memory, searching for any subject, anything to say that might mask the fact that she was a detective, and was instead merely an ordinary eleven-year-old girl with no interest whatsoever in crime or suspected fishy characters or half-seen tattoos.

  “Honeymoons. Girls like to hear about honeymoons, don’t they?” Ada asked. Lizzie, fork in her mouth at that moment, nodded in agreement.

  “The, erm, honeymoon?” Sir Caleb looked like he’d swallowed his spoon.

  “After the wedding. I understand you are to sail to Jamaica and honeymoon there. I bet you’ve made all sorts of interesting plans,” said Ada coyly. It helped for her to pretend to be Jane for a moment. “Specific plans.”

  “I, erm, well, yes, of course…,” tried Sir Caleb.

  “What Sir Caleb means to say is that, yes, all the details are well in hand,” said Mr. Brocklehurst. “But he wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for his bride-to-be.”

  “A surprise. How very thoughtful of you, Sir Caleb,” said Lizzie, managing to sound completely sincere. Ada was impressed.

  The house began to tremble ever so slightly, and a chill took the room. It was a familiar seasonal downpour, although to Ada even the rain didn’t seem right in this strange place.

  “I daresay,” Lizzie dared to say, “it doesn’t rain like this in Jamaica.”

  “I seem to recall that it does,” said Sir Caleb. “Monsoons, I think they’re called.”

  “Monsoons are only in southern Asia,” mumbled Ada with a mouthful of pudding. “Jamaica’s in the Caribbean. Different ocean.”

  Lizzie stared at Ada. Any hopes Ada had had about being seen as just an ordinary girl on an overnight visit were suddenly in jeopardy.

  “We learned it at school,” said Ada with her mouth still full, hoping that would make her sound less intelligent. It worked, although Ada knew Jane would not approve.

  “Ah, well, there you go, then,” said Sir Caleb. “School. Well done.”

  “Is Mrs. Somerville here?” Ada asked, after chewing and swallowing. “I thought she might be back.”

  “As we told you earlier, Lady Ada, she was called away on urgent business. In Scotland,” answered Mr. Brocklehurst.

  “Scotland? You didn’t mention Scotland.”

  “Didn’t I? Urgent business, regardless. I’m sure she sends her regrets at missing your…visit.” There was a menacing tone hiding under his words, like a snake under a rug.

  “Now if you ladies will excuse us,” the estate agent continued, “we must go, as we have urgent business of our own.”

  At this Sir Caleb looked even more nervous than usual and stood up too quickly, knocking the table and dropping his napkin on the floor. He sort of patted himself down by way of excuse and apology, and nodded by way of a bow, and followed Mr. Brocklehurst into the drawing room to resume smoking. The oak doors closed behind them, and the house staff came to clear the plates.

  “Lady Ada? Shall we?” Lizzie offered.

  “Shall we what?” Ada was at a loss for what to do next. But Lizzie took her arm and led the way out of the dining room and toward the stairs.

  “When you grow up in a house, you learn its secrets,” Lizzie said. She placed a long finger on her lips and winked. Sneaking up the staircase, Ada strode over the third stair, avoiding its squeak.

  “This way,” said Lizzie, leading Ada through snaky corridors.

  They came to a small, unused room at the front of the house, a once-upon-a-time nursery, Ada guessed. At the end of the room were two large windows that overlooked a smallish steep roof.

  Lizzie whispered, “Down there is the porch off the drawing room. They open the doors when the smoke gets too much inside, and they go out. We should be able to hear everything, but we have to be quiet!”

  Ada nodded, and dared not touch the window lest some secret creak or rattle give them away. Lizzie reached out to the latch with both hands, giving it a push-pull-shimmy at the same time, and the window opened toward them silently. At once, the girls were splashed with loud rain.

  “We’ll be soaked through,” Lizzie whispered again. “But we can have hot baths after, and get into our nightdresses. The wet won’t give us away, and the downpour will cover any sound we make.”

  Again, Ada nodded silently, appreciating that Lizzie had seemed to think everything through. Lizzie crept out onto the roof, undaunted by the torr
ent, though the roof was slick. Night had fallen with a crash, and Ada hoped that she would not follow, to smash against the paving stones below as the rain did, landing so hard it bounced. Ada shivered, and hand over knee she crawled like a cat. A wet, miserable, cold, and unhappy cat.

  Worse, it all seemed pointless. The rain made it impossible to hear anything but the mumbled voices of smoking men.

  “What do we do now?” Ada whispered.

  “Wait” came Lizzie’s reply. The girls waited. Ada kept her mouth shut, for fear she might drown.

  After forever, she heard the latch go on the glass doors to the porch beneath.

  “But how can she know?” the girls heard Sir Caleb say.

  “She doesn’t know. She suspects. I imagine Somerville put her up to it.” Ada was already squished together against the rain, but she squished even tighter at the sound of Mr. Brocklehurst’s gravelly voice.

  “She’s just a girl,” Sir Caleb insisted.

  “She’s clearly not just an anything. She’s a spy, and we’ll need to get rid of her.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “No, no. The Byron child will be sent home in the morning. Then we’ll need to move quickly.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure about—”

  “It’s a bit late not to be sure, Caleb. And we’re so close! We even managed to get rid of your wife, before you lost her.”

  Lizzie jumped a little, and mouthed “Wife?!” silently to Ada.

  “I didn’t lose her. She escaped! But they’ll find her, or the police will, and back to the hospital she goes. She’s out of her head—no one will believe anything she says.”

  “You’d better hope no one will believe her. She knows too much.”

  “An escaped madwoman. The Godwin girl thought she was a ghost!”

  “Well, at least Somerville is out of our hair for a while,” said the oily, bloated man. “By the time she gets to Scotland and finds out there was no urgent business, we’ll have you married, and the inheritance will be mine!”

  “Ours, I think you mean.”

  “Of course, of course, Caleb. Slip of the tongue.” His voice sounded even oilier than usual.

  “I wish we could find that blasted will,” Sir Caleb groused. “You know this estate—you promised you could find it!”

  “I did find one! But he said there was another squirreled away somewhere—thought he was being clever, but it didn’t save him—”

  “What if I marry Lizzie and the will shows up? We’ll be back where we are now.”

  “A sight worse. You’ll be in Newgate for bigamy.”

  “Listen to me, Brocklehurst. Find that will.”

  “Don’t use that tone with me, baronet or no!” Mr. Brocklehurst spat angrily. “If it weren’t for me, you’d still be losing at cards on the docks in Kingston!”

  There was a strange, quiet tapping sound, and Ada couldn’t make out what it was at first, until she realized it was her own teeth chattering in the freezing rain. She was shuddering violently, holding on to her arms instead of the roof, and began to feel hot instead of cold. Lizzie, herself a drowned rat, looked at Ada. “Are you all right?” said the shape of her mouth.

  Ada nodded, or at least shivered up and down. She regretted it at once, as that shook forth a loud sneeze.

  “What was that?” said Mr. Brocklehurst sharply.

  “What was what?” asked Sir Caleb.

  “I thought I heard…a sneeze. A girl sneeze.”

  “You’re imagining things. This is hardly a night for a girl to be outside sneezing. She’d catch her death of fever.”

  “Maybe it’s that Byron brat, or that wretched Lizzie,” said Mr. Brocklehurst. “Maybe they’re both out there in the rain, catching their death of fever! That would solve all our problems!” And the two cruel and deceitful men laughed at this, went inside, and closed the window.

  Ada found to her horror that she’d more or less frozen in place and couldn’t let go of her shivering arms. Lizzie was in the same shape, her skin fish grey and rain slathered. Ada thought she must have taken a shock by the news, by the words “wife” and “will” and “get rid of” and “death of fever,” or by the rain, but Ada herself was getting dizzy, and it was awfully, awfully hot here in the freezing rain. That’s not right, she thought. That’s not right.

  But Lizzie’s gaze was not held by shock, at least not the shock of what she’d overheard. For as both girls peered out from their perch above the porch, they saw the ghostly figure of a girl in grey, as soaked as themselves, on the edge of the forest, there under the stony roof of the family crypt.

  The next morning, Mary looked up into the long, gaunt face of Ada’s butler and felt a chill down her spine. The silent Mr. Franklin managed to convey a sense of dread. Puzzled, Mary nodded as he held open the door for her and Jane.

  “Whatever’s…,” Mary began. But the look of the rest of the Byron household stole the words from her lips.

  On the stair, Anna Cumberland was pale as a sheet, her hand covering her mouth, and her eyes rimmed with tears. Behind and above her stood a rattled-looking Allegra.

  “Ada’s sick,” said Allegra. “Horrible. Fever.” And with that she ran past Anna and down the stairs to throw her arms tightly around Mary.

  “I’ve seen it before, in the convent,” Allegra sobbed. “They die. They always die. What if she dies?”

  Mary swallowed the news and rocked a little on her feet both from the shock of it and from the sheer force of Allegra’s sadness. She shot a look at Jane, who stood dripping in the doorway with her hands to her face.

  “Let me see her,” said Mary with a confidence she did not possess.

  “The doctor is with her now,” said Anna.

  Just then a shadow fell upon the girls, and it seemed that the air itself had turned to dust. The fine hairs on the nape of Mary’s neck stood on end, and her fingertips prickled with dread.

  At the top of the stairs was a man of modest height, with fine features and a single, dark eyebrow that seemed tangled in the curls of his hair. His expression was gloomy, and even to look upon him made the girls at the bottom of the stairs tired, so terribly tired.

  Despite her sudden onset of weakness, Mary studied the gentleman for any sign of news. He had an otherworldly stare that seemed to look past and through her at the same time.

  “Doctor?” asked Jane with anticipation.

  The doctor cleared his throat as though he hadn’t spoken in a hundred years. His accent was difficult to place—European, but farther afield than France or even Germany—and he spoke slowly.

  “Her condition is concerning.”

  “Pardon me, doctor, but what is Lady Ada’s condition? What would you have us do?” Mary asked.

  He said nothing but remained motionless as the air about him became colder. The man himself was a slow-moving horror, as out of place as a spider on a pillowcase.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Jane, balling her hands into fists. “Doctor! The Lady Ada! Is she going to be all right?”

  “Fever,” said the doctor at last. “I do not like it, no, not one bit.”

  He descended the stairs in a manner that made it seem as if his upper half were not moving, as though he floated his way down toward the girls.

  “Poor thing,” the doctor continued. “Poor, poor little thing. Leeches, of course. Yes, leeches…”

  The girls stood and watched the strange man make it all the way down to the foyer, at which point they pulled themselves away. Finally, the door closed behind the doctor, although none of them had said goodbye.

  “I’m going up,” said Mary, taking Allegra’s shoulders.

  Anna collected herself. “I’ll put the kettle on,” she said as she trotted to the upstairs kitchen.

  The door, having been clicked shut for less than ten seconds, burst open without so much as a knock. Mr. Franklin took a step back toward the door as a woman dressed entirely in somber brown, bonnet and all, barged through.

&nbs
p; “Where is she?” the intruder asked Mr. Franklin. He paused for a heartbeat and tilted his head ever so slightly up the stairs. Without so much as an “excuse me,” she bolted past Jane, Mary, and Allegra.

  “And who might you be?” asked Jane, frustration pushing her past the point of courtesy. For all her desire to be a person of Society, it took almost nothing for the feisty, impatient twelve-year-old girl in Jane to surface.

  “I should ask the same of you lot,” answered the woman without looking back. Mary could not help but notice the stranger’s dress was a near match to the matronly, somber brown of Mrs. Somerville’s. The three girls looked at one another, shrugged, and followed.

  Before they reached the top of the stairs, they heard the door to Ada’s room close firmly. Clearly, they were unwelcome.

  “Who is she?” asked Allegra.

  “I’m not sure, but Mr. Franklin admitted her, so she can’t be a total stranger.” Mary looked at Allegra. “Tell me what happened.”

  Allegra’s lip was still trembling, her cheeks wet from tears. “Ada went to Lizzie’s, for dinner and to stay over,” said Allegra. Mary nodded. She knew that bit. “I went to bed, and in the middle of the night a carriage showed up, and there was a coachman pounding on the door, and Mr. Franklin carried Ada inside soaking wet, and Anna sent for the doctor.” She began crying again.

  “All right, all right,” said Mary. “Shush now. I’ll look in on Ada and introduce myself to this mystery woman. Let’s keep our wits about us, shall we?”

  Jane and Allegra nodded in agreement, and Jane took Allegra’s small hand. Mary squeezed out the best smile she could and opened the door.

  Ada was asleep but shivering. Her skin was yellow-white and rubbery, her lips almost grey. The sight put a fist-sized lump in Mary’s stomach. With her back to Mary, the mysterious visitor in brown, still in her cape and bonnet, wrung a cloth in a basin of water and washed Ada’s forehead.

  “Excuse me,” said Mary. “We’re all at wits’ end with worry. My name is Mary Godwin, and I am a friend of Lady Ada’s. I’m pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”