Lady Sherlock

by Brooks Arthur Wachtel

  The woman snapped her fingers again and extended her hand. On one finger was an unusual ring: a blood-red pearl crescent-moon. The midget gave her the case, which she put in the pram. She wheeled it away as the “children” fell obediently in line. As the smoking “child” was about to toss his cigar, the woman shook her head. He crushed the cigar out in his palm and placed it in his pocket. They walked back through the hedge into the park, looking like nothing more sinister than a nanny and her charges.

  Behind them, in the clearing, the badly wounded officer painfully opened his eyes.

  Chapter Three

  Charing Cross Hospital

  Ramsgate and an over-cultivated fop of a naval officer (not that I knew what a fop was at that age), Commander Bernard, who seemed to permanently affect a supercilious sneer, huddled around the bed of the officer wounded in the park. The injured man was alive, but in great pain. They were in a private room. Charing Cross Hospital, located on the embankment, not far from St. James Park and Whitehall, was the most accessible hospital to the scene of the crime (and the most convenient to the offices of government). A senior surgeon, as befitted the gravity of the case, was having sharp words with Commander Bernard, telling him that he didn’t want his patient questioned at this time.

  Bernard, sniffing snuff, could have used a lesson in “bed-side” manner, for he simply dismissed the surgeon with a haughty, “I do so apologize, doctor, but you really must leave the room. Really must.”

  The doctor, not accustomed to being overruled in his own realm, walked to the door with a sneer. “I will allow you one minute before I send in a sister! And I insist you keep that snuff away from him!” With a parting glare, he closed the door behind him.

  Commander Bernard shrugged. “Touchy, these medical fellows, eh?”

  Ramsgate shrugged back, leaned over the patient. The wounded officer gasped with effort, “Ger … Germans … the Ger …” then he sank back unable to continue.

  “Fritz again, eh?” snorted Commander Bernard. “Bad show. Someday those Huns’ll push us too far. Ask him for details.”

  Before Ramsgate could do that, there was a knock at the door, and the sister, a high-ranking nurse, announced herself. Ramsgate suggested the two of them come back later. Commander Bernard reluctantly agreed, and they left. The sister entered, closed the door and took out a hypodermic syringe from her apron. The glass cylinder clicked against her red pearl crescent-moon ring. She injected the injured officer, and he gagged, shuddered, and lapsed back in the bed as she mused, “You’ve played your part, time to exit the stage.” She studied the dying man, her face a beautiful but expressionless mask. She bent down and gently kissed him. “Auf Wiedersehen,” she said.

  Chapter Four

  St. James Park

  “I don’t like bringing in outsiders,” huffed Commander Bernard to Ramsgate as they, and several constables, watched Mother examine the scene of the crime. She was on her knees, sweeping something on the grass into an envelope. She was dressed elegantly, but a keen eye would have noted that her outfit had subtle alterations that allowed freedom and movement, all while being fashionable.

  As Bernard saw her withdraw a shiny, flat metal case from her reticule, he was further irritated. “A cigarette case! Is this creature going to smoke?”

  Tasha threw him one of her practised superior smiles and snapped open the case, revealing her stylish Art Nouveau magnifying glass. Bernard coughed into his fist as Ramsgate, happy at not being on the receiving end of Tasha’s wit for once, smirked.

  Mother studied the ground. Then, oddly unexcited, asked, “Would you give me your interpretation of the events, Ramsgate?”

  He was flattered she’d asked. “Delighted! I think it’s obvious. Those tracks suggest some sort of wheeled device, possibly a vendor of hot chestnuts by the proximity of children’s footprints.” He pointed out the prints as Tasha nodded for him to continue. “The Admiralty courier came in here seeking a treat, the vendor, in reality a German agent, waited until the two of them were alone and then attacked the courier, though mistakenly failing to kill him.”

  “Why, Ramsgate. You really are coming along. You’ve observed every important clue.”

  He swelled in self-satisfaction. He should have seen what was coming.

  Tasha concluded, “Incorrectly.”

  The swelling subsided. She continued. “The size and weight of the tracks, the location of the footprints and the length of the vendor’s stride, indicate a singular exceedingly probable course of events.”

  The two men stared contritely at her. Mother was used to that. They motioned for her to continue.

  “The conveyance was a perambulator pushed by a woman. Notice the narrow footprints and the dainty stride. The children—and the footprints indicate four of them—were midgets.”

  “How do you know they were midgets?” asked Ramsgate, with a hint of asperity that Mother ignored.

  “There was no aimless wandering. Remarkably disciplined for children.”

  “But not impossible,” insisted Ramsgate.

  “Unlikely,” Tasha said pleasantly. “Furthermore, children, as a rule, don’t smoke cigars.” She opened the envelope. Inside were ashes. “These ashes are always near a ‘child’s’ footprints. He was a midget, and pretty well off, for this blend is a unique mixture from Bagen’s of Edinburgh and costs sixpence an ounce.”

  “Never did like bringing in outsiders,” grumbled Bernard.

  “I won’t burden you much longer, Commander. I shall call your consideration to two peculiar items and leave.”

  “Leave?” asked Ramsgate.

  Mother ignored the question. “One. This area is isolated and away from the courier’s normal route. The bait to lure an experienced man so astray must have been enticingly disarming. I suggest a midget disguised as a distraught child. Who could resist?”

  “I, for one,” offered Bernard.

  “No doubt,” agreed Tasha. “Two! The courier survived! That is very sloppy work, not at all in keeping with the calibre of planning we’ve seen thus far. His survival was deliberate.”

  Ramsgate raised his eyebrows. “Delib … why?”

  Tasha smiled enigmatically (she practised that, too). “Ah, there you call upon me for a guess, and I never, in the absence of data, guess.” She had read that explanation in The Strand Magazine and decided if she were going to steal, to steal from the best.

  Bernard pushed himself forward. “Then just what, Lady Dorrington, are we to do with this information?”

  “File it away. Here …” she pointed to her head, “… in easy reach for the moment when future facts will make it useful. Good luck, gentlemen.” She started to leave.

  “Where are you going?” asked Ramsgate as he hurried after her.

  “Home.”

  “But the case?”

  She stopped at the entrance of the hedge and shook her head. “I’ve given my advice. This is a government case. I wouldn’t involve myself in that bureaucratic labyrinth for the world.”

  A few curious people had crowded near the entrance—the “nanny/nurse” among them. In fact, Mother briefly stood right next to her as she exited the hedge, followed, like puppies, by Ramsgate and Bernard. The woman overheard Tasha as she summed up.

  “Just look for a woman and four midgets, although they’re probably in Berlin by now.”

  “I hope not. Those missing documents are very important.” Ramsgate could not keep the concern from his voice.

  “What are they?”

  Before Ramsgate could respond, Bernard cut him off. “That’s restricted information.”

  Tasha sighed, her prognosis of government confirmed. Ramsgate knew when to back down. “All right. Look for a woman, eh?”

  Bernard couldn’t resist the chance to show off his wit, or what passed for it. “Now there’s amusing work, so many to look over.”

  The woman, unnoticed, held Tasha firmly in her scrutiny. There was even a ghost of an expression of interest, especially when
Mother concluded: “I can narrow the field for you. She’s five foot eight inches, one hundred and thirty-five pounds, light brown hair, and has studied ballet. Good hunting.”

  The description fit the woman completely. The pity was that Mother didn’t apply her knowledge as she walked past. The woman, in a knot of onlookers, averted her features as Tasha swept by, only to return her surveillance as the astute detective gracefully receded behind the crowd. Then, as if to increase her curious fascination, she heard Bernard telling Ramsgate, “That woman’s deductions were all stuff and nonsense.” But when Ramsgate answered, “Don’t be so sure. Lady Dorrington is the cleverest woman in Europe.” The woman’s eyebrows arched and a smug smile flickered across her face. You could almost hear the unspoken, “Is she now … we’ll see.”

  Ramsgate had one more salvo in my Mother’s defence as he leaned in and said quietly, “And she can be trusted with secrets, Commander. Even ones concerning Dreadnought!”

  Chapter Five

  The Hermes Club

  The Edwardian Age was an era of clubs, and most men of substance, and many not, belonged to them. The variety of these institutions was extraordinary, with clubs for gentlemen of every interest: military and naval clubs, conservative clubs, reform clubs, theatrical clubs, and even a club for the otherwise un-clubbable, where members were not permitted to speak to other members.

  Ramsgate was a member of two clubs. The first was the Liberal Club, and he would often retreat to its sprawling, but solidly elegant abode near the embankment.

  The second was the Hermes Club, a venerable establishment for people who belonged to other clubs but wanted to expand their social circles to include walks of life they might otherwise not meet. Within its elegant walls, an Admiral might share a brandy with a matinée idol, or a back-bencher from the Commons could defeat the Chief Justice in a rubber of whist.

  That night, there was an element allowed that even this unconventional establishment usually excluded. The kind of persons not welcome in any club, no matter how conservative, liberal, or democratic. Persons shunned by these gentlemen’s clubs because they could never be gentlemen—but they could be ladies. And four times a year, the Hermes Club allowed women—these alien creatures—to cross its threshold.

  Commander Bernard was also a member, and had, as I might have expected, misgivings about allowing women. He was losing a lot of money to one in a card game.

  “Ladies’ night should be once a decade, not four times a year!” Bernard complained, as he tossed his losing hand to the table and stalked away. His feminine opponent extended her fingers, reaching for his cards and revealing the crimson glow of her crescent-moon ring, contrasting with the forest green of the gaming table. She laughed and said, “Beginner’s luck.”

  As she pulled over Bernard’s losses, a tall naval officer in an immaculate dress uniform gave Bernard a mocking salute, and then grinned at the woman, noting her enormous pile of chips. The name of this strapping gentleman, I would later learn, was Commander Sebastian Blackshaw, and he was not there by happenstance.

  Bernard ambled through the vast, restoration-era ballroom, past the various games of chance. The place had been converted into a casino for the night. Honouring the chairman of the entertainment committee’s recent trip to California, many of the games reflected his romantic views of the American West.

  The Chairman’s efforts to revere his dime-novel (imported from America) understanding of the frontier was shared with another celebration, one which was a world away from cowboys and six-guns. Bernard had gravitated to a huge cake, in the image of a battleship, being sliced and served. Above it was an elegant banner that stretched across the corner of the prodigious room. “To our own Captain Summerlee—Commanding H.M.S. Dreadnought, Congratulations!”

  Captain Summerlee was toasting his new command to the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, both resplendent in dress uniforms that made them more dashing in appearance than reality.

  “Congratulations, Summerlee. Navy’s always been well represented here at Hermes, you know,” said the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll try and hold the end up,” said Captain Summerlee between mouthfuls of cake.

  The navy was indeed well represented, for there were many uniformed men at the gaming table, and along with them, an almost equal number of elegantly-dressed women. None of the ladies appeared more enchanting than Mother, as she entered with Ramsgate. She was magnificent in a gown that showed off her figure to the limit of daring, though in this case Mother allowed it to be enhanced by a rarely worn corset. She inevitably shunned the constraints of that torturous device, and indeed, with her trim and athletic figure, really didn’t require it. While she may not have had the artificially tiny wasp waist that a corset produced, her curves were sufficient to turn heads and stop conversation. Tonight, however, Mother surrendered to style and vanity, laced herself in canvas and whale bone, and gave truth to the adage that glamour was painful. They paused at the entrance. Towering above them was the famous statue of Hermes, the wing-footed messenger of the gods, and, more relevantly, the god of travellers and gamblers. Tasha scanned the room.

  “Ah, the fleet’s in! All those sailors,” she teased Ramsgate.

  “Rekindling youthful memories?” Ramsgate said a bit more rakishly than usual as Tasha threw him a tolerant raised eyebrow. “It’s in honour of one of the members, Captain Summerlee.”

  “Yes, he’s just been posted to command Dreadnought, at least according to the Times and Daily Chronicle—and they rarely agree on anything,” observed Mother.

  Less than an hour later, the gamblers at the roulette table gawked with admiration at Tasha’s enviable pile of five-pound chips. Bernard, champagne in hand, closed in as Ramsgate commented to Tasha that the table was following her lead.

  Bernard groaned, “Wish I had something left to bet.”

  “Run of poor luck, Commander?” said Tasha, with the barest hint of sympathy.

  Bernard pointed to the card tables in the corner. “I was beached by that witch over there. Lost my entire allowance.”

  They couldn’t see the “witch” through the crowd around her table. Tasha and the two men drifted over in time to see a portly vice admiral nervously studying his hand. He folded and withdrew from the game. Another player sat down, and the woman across from him rapidly shuffled the pack of cards. The dealer was the murderer of the Admiralty courier, no longer in the disguise of nanny or nurse, but in a spectacular deep green gown.

  Commander Sebastian Blackshaw grinned at her expertise. Across from the commander and the murderess stood a very pretty young blonde in elegant, but proper and modest, attire—as if she wanted to draw no interest to herself—who watched Tasha keenly. Mother, scrutinizing the dealer, didn’t spot that she herself was being observed by this fair-haired woman, who could not suppress a knowing smirk.

  Ramsgate studied the game in confusion and asked Mother, “What are they playing?”

  “It’s a variation of poker, the American game that’s en vogue at the French casinos.”

  Bernard huffed, disgruntled. “That woman has more luck than she deserves!”

  “Luck has very little to do with it,” smiled Tasha.

  Mr. Heath was the Hermes Club’s Acting President. He leaned forward watching as Tasha, with Ramsgate and Bernard behind her, shuffled a pack of cards on his desk. They were in his private office, which was shrouded in silence. Behind Heath, through the window, a little paddle steamer chugged by on the Thames.

  The sound of the cards being shuffled in the otherwise hushed room focused everyone on Tasha. “Whoever she is, she’s employing the Higgans’ shuffle.”

  The men were bewildered. “I’ve never heard of it,” said Mr. Heath.

  “I don’t doubt that, Mr. Heath,” answered Tasha as she continued to shuffle. “I know of only five people capable of executing it.”

  “Only five!” said Ramsgate in disbelief.

  “Three in the civilised wor
ld and two in the United States.” Mother actually admired Americans, but she knew of Heath’s affection for the United States and she loved to needle.

  Heath sat back in his plush leather chair and was suddenly conscious of the formal portraits of past Hermes Club presidents staring down upon him from the walls. The severe faces—with their eyes peering into him—seemed to hold him in judgement. The club had never known scandal, and it was his duty to honour that pristine past and keep it that way. “Cheating! And in my term of office!” Heath shook his head and turned to the window. A fog was drifting in, obscuring the Thames.

  Tasha riffled the pack and the sound turned Heath’s attention back toward her. Now that Mother had his focus, she explained, “The Higgans’ shuffle involves remembering the order discarded cards are replaced in the pack and dealing tops and bottoms in an advantageous sequence.”

  “That’s impossible,” laughed Ramsgate.

  Mother dealt five cards and turned them over, one deuce and four aces. “That depends on the individual.”

  Heath stood up and, with his hands resting on his desk, leaned closer to the cards. The fog may have been thickening out the window, but the Acting President of the Hermes Club was starting to see light dispelling his personal blackness. He placed the cards in Mother’s hand, “An individual who could be very valuable to the good name of the Hermes Club, at this moment.”

  Back at the table, the devious and cheating brunette was enjoying herself as opponent after opponent left the game poorer in pocket, but richer in their estimation of the female of the species. “Anyone feel brave?” she asked the crowd.

  No one stirred to fill the empty seat. Then, at once, a large stack of chips was placed on the table and Mother gracefully lowered herself into the vacant chair. She smiled in a way that any woman could read as a challenge and murmured, “I thought you might be finding men too easy.”