The Case of the Girl in Grey

by Jordan Stratford

  “I’m sorry, Miss Godwin,” said the woman, “but Lady Ada is in no condition for visitors today, besides which it is news to me that the young lady has any friends whatsoever.”

  “But I am her friend. Her best friend. We study together, under Peebs—that is to say, Mr. Shelley. And we—” Mary stopped herself from saying “And we solve mysteries under the name Wollstonecraft Detective Agency” because while half of London might know the secret, there was no need to inform the other half. “And I’m sorry if I missed your name, Mrs….”

  “Woolcott. I am Mrs. Woolcott. And I’m afraid, Miss Godwin, I’m going to have to ask you and your friends to leave at once. If you have any sense at all, you can see that Ada is terribly ill, and this is no place for the chattering of girls.”

  “They are not my friends, Mrs. Woolcott. One is my sister, and the other is sister to Lady Ada. And she lives here.”

  Mrs. Woolcott stopped at this and looked at Mary.

  “Allegra?” she said in astonishment. “That was Allegra?”

  “It was. Rather, she is,” asserted Mary.

  “The poor thing must be frightened half to death.”

  “She is, Mrs. Woolcott. We all are.”

  “I’ll see to her briefly, if you don’t mind staying with Lady Ada for a moment.”

  “Not at all,” said Mary, relieved to find Mrs. Woolcott proving to be an ally.

  Mrs. Woolcott bent to brush the hair from sleeping Ada’s forehead, and untied her bonnet, leaving it on the chair. She tiptoed expertly around the piles of drawings, books, tools, and random machine parts scattered on Ada’s floor.

  Mary took Mrs. Woolcott’s place at Ada’s side. Ada had never seemed more doll-like and small, and Mary realized how much of Ada’s presence was the sheer force of her mind and personality, which filled every room. But now there was just this poor, sick child, tiny in the vast Marylebone house.

  On the side table where Ada usually kept a candle for the night was a space where no candle was, because Ada had not meant to spend the night there. Instead of the candle, there was a scrap of paper. Mary picked it up.

  A note, in Ada’s handwriting, in pencil. Capital letters. At first it seemed to Mary to be gibberish, nonsense, as the letters didn’t spell anything she could pronounce. But then she remembered the M’s and C’s and X’s. Roman numerals. They must mean something. Something important enough to send her into last night’s storm and the jaws of this beastly fever.

  Mrs. Woolcott returned, and not knowing why, Mary discreetly palmed Ada’s note, hiding it from view.

  “She doesn’t remember me, of course, the dear,” said Mrs. Woolcott. “But Allegra was only a baby when last we met. She’s grown into quite a fierce little thing.”

  “Like her sister,” said Mary. But Ada didn’t seem quite so fierce at the moment. She coughed a little bit in her sleep, her shoulders jerking uncomfortably toward the ceiling. Mrs. Woolcott came to Ada’s side, expecting Mary to move out of the way, which she did.

  “Do you…Can I get you anything?” asked Mary.

  “Oh, Miss Cumberland’s seen to that, thank you, Miss Godwin,” said Mrs. Woolcott, who seemed to know her way about the house as though she belonged there.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me then,” said Mary, closing Ada’s door behind her. She set out for Allegra and Jane, whom she found in the drawing room with a newly arrived Peebs.

  He stood up. “Miss Mary, how is she?” he asked.

  “I cannot say, or at least I dare not,” Mary answered, on the verge of tears. “Dear Allegra, please do tell me more of our Ada’s arrival.”

  “I told you. A coach in the night, and they brought her in just like that.”

  “That’s rather inhospitable,” noted Peebs. “Perhaps they thought she would do best under the supervision of her own doctor?”

  “But to send her out on an hour’s carriage ride—in that ghastly storm?” accused Jane. “And this Mrs. Woolcott? Who is she? She acted like she knew both Lady Ada and Allegra quite well, although Allegra doesn’t remember her.” Allegra nodded.

  “And she knows Miss Cumberland,” Mary added. “I believe she does. I don’t know who she is, but she seems to be on our side, or at least on Ada’s side, and that will have to do for now.” Mary handed Peebs the scrap of paper.

  “What do you make of this?”

  “Roman numerals,” Peebs answered right away. “1780, 1792. This next line is 1808. And 1810 here. More here, here. Why do you ask?”

  “I found this on Ada’s bedside. It’s her handwriting, though the paper is soaked through. She obviously had it with her in the rain. I think it means something.”

  “I’ll wager it does,” said Peebs. “This is odd, though. Look—these here and here aren’t Roman numerals at all. They’re Greek letters. And she’s gone over some of these others a few times; she’s underlined them—well, underdotted them. Look.”

  “A code! It must be! Hidden to look like dates. Hardly anyone would notice,” said Mary.

  “Exactly, real dates, only with something else scattered among them.”

  “A code meant to look like not-a-code,” Mary said slowly, searching for the word.

  “Oh!” cried Allegra. “Like in Ada’s wizard book!”

  “Spies,” said Jane cryptically.

  “Steganography,” said Peebs.

  “Peebs,” said Mary, “we must send word to Dedlock Hall. To Lizzie. She can tell us what happened, and she’ll be able to tell us what this means, surely.”

  “I shall see to it,” said Jane crisply. “A proper letter, at once.”

  Nodding, Peebs offered his arm to Mary, and they walked to the drawing room.

  This was not how Mary had imagined the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency would be. Nothing made sense. Ada was not supposed to fall ill like this, she thought. We should have caught a fishmonger by now. Alas, there seemed no fishmonger to catch; just a sneaking suspicion of fishiness, a ghost girl who looked rather a lot like a real girl about to marry said fishiness, and a scrap of paper with a maybe-code.

  She looked up and found Peebs staring out the window, suddenly looking about a hundred years old.

  “Are you all right?” Mary asked.

  “Mmm? Yes, I suppose. Although to be fair to circumstance, I seem to have proven myself to be somewhat less than all right.”

  “However so?”

  “It was ever my intention to keep my eye on young Ada. I encouraged this adventure, this Detective Agency—”

  “But we kept it a secret from you! It’s hardly your fault.”

  “Come now, Mary. I should hope you hold me in higher esteem than one who would be so easily deceived. I knew. I had hoped to coax Ada out of her shell, as you have done most admirably. But now it seems she has ventured too far, too far out indeed. Off investigating, home after midnight, soaked through. I feel as though I sent her into that storm myself.”

  “You cannot blame yourself. I should have been with her.”

  “No, Mary, you should not. Lady Ada is your friend, not your responsibility. Whereas she is mine, and I have failed her.”

  “You have not failed her yet. Peebs, please hold out a hope. I fear I do not have the strength to bear this hope alone.”

  “Then we as her friends shall bear this hope together. I do, Mary. I do hope.”

  Mary smiled a little at this.

  “You know,” added Peebs, “I have often had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of our Ada. She is an extraordinary creature, and rather formidable.”

  “And so?”

  “Well, I cannot imagine this fever is going to enjoy being in Ada’s bad books much either.”

  Worried as she was, Mary almost laughed at that. She took a deep breath.

  “You’re a spy,” said Mary.

  “Yes, we covered that in the middle of your last case.”

  “You’re in a book,” Mary pressed.

  “Well, yes, I have a few poems published—”

&nbs
p; “In Jane’s book. On…Society.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “That.”

  “Merely an accident of birth. I was born to my father and he to his.”

  “The first Earl of Castle Goring,” said Mary.

  “It’s not that grand. Or even a castle, really. Castle Boring, we called it growing up.” Peebs chuckled a little.

  “So you’re rich, to put matters precisely.”

  Peebs cleared his throat. “My family has means. I on the other hand have a modest allowance. I have little interest in my family’s fortunes, as my destiny is poetry, not wealth. As for being a spy, yes, I placed myself in the Byron household to keep my eye on Ada, as I promised her father. Knowing her mother would not approve, I had to remain…”

  “Clandestine.”

  “Clandestine, as you say.”

  “But you’re not just a spy in Ada’s house,” she said. “You’re a spy in mine as well.”

  “Ah,” said Peebs.

  “Ah, indeed,” said Mary accusingly. “You’re my father’s patron. You give him money. That’s how we live. Because of you.”

  “Not at all. Your father and your stepmother are both esteemed publishers who—”

  “Who couldn’t rub tuppence ha’penny together if they roasted chestnuts, yes, I know. We clearly need your money. I just don’t know why you would choose to keep such matters from me.”

  “I assure you I was not being clandestine, merely discreet. And I am certain your father would not appreciate the discussion of such matters with his fourteen-year-old daughter. I’m afraid, Mary, that we are to leave it at that.”

  “But—”

  “At that,” said Peebs with finality.

  Mary crossed her arms. She had recently learned something about herself—she resented not knowing something the minute a question occurred to her. I really am turning into Ada, she thought.

  Ada woke often in the night, muttering with delirium, like a swimmer coming up for breath. Each time, a sleepless Mrs. Woolcott would cheer her on, wipe her brow with a cool cloth, and offer a sip of water.

  In Somers Town, Mary was equally restless, dreaming of Roman numerals, which swam about in an ocean of her own head, waves pooling in the little dots drawn beneath the odd letter here and there. She woke with Jane’s cold knees pressed against her back and waited for dawn, making pictures on the ceiling with her imagination.

  Her brother’s cries were almost a relief—at last she could rise and turn her ideas into actions.

  Fires, kettle, breakfast, and baby attended to. Basin and dressing and chores, cape and bonnet and Jane’s chatter, and finally the grey of Polygon Road and a black carriage and a reading boy who pretended he wasn’t there. Jane debarked from the carriage at Marylebone with a serious nod to her sister, but Mary remained inside with Charles.

  As usual, some fiddling was required to allow Charles a day off from his job at the boot-polish factory, and Mary waited safely inside the carriage while this mysterious business was conducted. But at last Charles emerged, and they made their way west.

  Church records. It had come to Mary in the night. They had dates, but what did they mean? They must relate to the Earnshaw family, or Ada wouldn’t have thought them important. She would have liked to ask Lizzie, but they’d had no response to the letter they’d sent her the day before, which was worrisome. What would a detective do next? Mary wondered, trying hard to feel like one. And then it came to her: a church near Dedlock Hall must have the birth, marriage, and death records for the whole family, going back forever. They had the years—they just needed to find what had happened in them.

  Kensington was a new direction for Charles, and it was the most expensive carriage ride of his life. He was grateful for the shillings Mary had brought along, folded in a sheet of paper that never left her gloved hand.

  They exited the carriage at a compact and bustling market, flanked by churches. Mary took mental notes of everything, trying to get her bearings. To the north lay Shepherd’s Bush, and the river was to their south, though she couldn’t catch its familiar stink.

  They wandered the market in the guise of brother and sister, weaving among carts and stalls and ignoring wary-eyed merchants who glanced at Charles’s clothes and watched his hands. They had just decided in which church to begin their investigation when Charles sensed a movement in a narrow alley between two brick buildings as they passed.

  Experience had taught Charles not to look too closely. He sidled closer to Mary and picked up his steps.

  “Find the will” came a voice behind them. They turned.

  The ghost. Charles knew at once this was Mary’s girl in grey, the one he had hunted in Regent’s Park. Frenzied look, grey gown, auburn hair, she could be no other.

  “You! Are you all right?” Mary’s words tumbled out before she could think. “Good heavens, but you’re the spitting image of—”

  “You were watching me in Regent’s Park,” Charles interrupted.

  She nodded. “You have to help me, you have to save Lizzie. I heard them talking.”

  “Lizzie?” asked Mary. “But how? Heard who talking?”

  “Find the will. The will is the key. It locks him out.” Her eyes darted about the street as though she were afraid of being followed. “Lizzie is in terrible danger. Lock him out!” With that she dashed into the street, where the throng of people and carts and horses and barrels made it easy for her to disappear. Charles thought to chase her, but she had vanished.

  “All right, Miss Mary?” Charles asked, hoping he sounded less rattled than he felt.

  “Well, better for having my senses restored to trustworthiness. That girl was no ghost. But the resemblance…What does she mean, ‘Lizzie is in danger’? Oh! Charles! She knows Lizzie—so the two cases are related. But how?”

  “She said something about a will, and that means dying, miss,” said Charles. “And that means church records. So it would seem the task before us is unchanged.”

  “Quite right, Master Dickens. Church records. Onward.”

  The verger at the first church was kind enough to direct Mary and Charles to the second, where records for all parish activities were kept. Weddings and christenings and funerals, the locations of graves, and records too of church holdings; farms and orphanages, docks and estates left by those with no one else to leave things to. “All going back to the last fire,” the verger had said, and this was some eighty years ago.

  This was no Times archive, with neatly folded grey blankets of words, tidily stacked and neatly labeled. This was an Ada’s-bedroom-floor of sliding piles of notebooks, mostly cheaply clothbound and dog-eared things from the previous century. And none of it printed either, but penned in flecking brown ink, writ small to save space, line to line.

  Charles looked at Mary and raised an eyebrow.

  “We need to make a plan,” she said. “We have dates ranging from 1780 to 1812 on the list. I’ll work forward from 1780 and you work backward from 1812, and we’ll meet in the middle.”

  “Any idea where 1812 would be?” asked Charles.

  “Not yet. If you take this corner here, I’ll start over there. Take a ledger top and bottom of a stack and read the dates. I’ll do the same, and we’ll see if there’s a pattern. If not, we’ll each take a step closer to the center and see what dates those ledgers reveal. We should at least see if we’re getting warmer.”

  Charles nodded, and Mary crossed the room, thinking Ada would be proud of her for being so methodical.

  Charles opened the first slim book on the top of his pile. “Farm receipts, 1782. I say, that doesn’t seem much for a pig.” He pulled a ledger from the bottom of the pile. “1782 as well.”

  Mary picked up the hem of her skirt with one hand while undoing the string on her bonnet with the other. She placed the bonnet on a stack that seemed slightly less dusty than the others.

  “1769,” she said, looking at the first date that was (conveniently) written on the cover of the first ledger she saw. S
he took another from the stack. “1770.” She looked at Charles, and they each took a large step to the right and tried new piles.

  “1810,” said Charles.

  “1779,” said Mary, smiling.

  Each took another side step, and they were there.

  “1812,” Charles said.

  “1780!” said Mary, with excitement.

  “Shall we go through that pile together?” Charles asked.

  “No, I’ll excavate down and go backward in time. You go through that one and see if we can’t sneak up on it.”

  “And, er, what are we looking for?”

  “Dedlock Hall, anything involving the Earnshaws or Dedlock Hall. Although…”

  “Yes?” asked Charles.

  “I just had a dreadful thought. What we’re looking for—it’s likely a secret. Or perhaps several secrets. That wouldn’t be here, would it? I mean to say, everything in these notebooks is something witnessed, something legal. Not secret at all.” She was disheartened at this realization.

  “No such thing as a secret, Miss Mary,” Charles explained. “There’s always a trace somewhere, and I reckon here’s the place. It all ends up here, names and dates and the whole works. Nobody comes looking—that’s the only thing makes it secret.”

  Mary sighed, the heartbreak of it all tugging at the hem of her attention. She shook it off.

  “Dedlock then,” she said, attending to the matter at hand. But Charles was already somewhere in the spring of 1812.

  “Twins!” said Mary, staring at the baptism certificate in the lurching carriage. In her ungloved hands was a sheaf of paper, each sheet a hasty copy of a document found in the church records office. Across from her, bouncing at every pothole, sat Charles with a similar bundle.

  “Elizabeth and Alice, born to Calpurnia and George Earnshaw, 1810. So…Lizzie has a sister? Is this our ghost girl?”

  “It would seem so, Miss Mary.”

  “But then look at this,” said Mary, presenting another note. “The two girls were accepted by the church for adoption, to be placed with another family. Lizzie’s adoption is here, but I couldn’t find one for Alice.