A Case of Grave Danger

by Sophie Cleverly

  I wondered if Father would flinch at the mention of her, but his expression gave nothing away.

  ‘I … years ago,’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘She displayed some … strange behaviour. I felt dreadful, but I thought it best not to have her around the family any longer.’

  ‘Please, sir,’ Oliver said, nervously hopping from foot to foot. ‘Can you tell us anything about her, where we might be able to find her?’

  ‘Last I heard,’ he started, ‘she was living in Ashes Lane. That’s right, I think. Whether she’d still be there, I don’t know …’

  The sounds of angry footsteps descending into the tunnel suddenly hit my ears. Oliver started tapping me on the arm with increasing urgency. ‘Miss Violet …’ he warned.

  ‘I really don’t think you should be getting involved with this,’ Father said. ‘You shouldn’t be down here, and I think you need to cease this investigation. I don’t want you getting hurt, or …’

  ‘Violet!’

  That wasn’t Oliver shouting my name. I turned round slowly.

  It was Mother, followed by several angry policemen.

  The look on her face told me all I needed to know about precisely how much trouble I was in.

  ‘Violet,’ she repeated in a low voice. She ignored Bones, who had bounced along the stone tunnel and was trying to greet her enthusiastically. ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘I can explain,’ I said, my hands raised in the air.

  ‘Close that hatch!’ one of the constables ordered.

  ‘I’ll be back soon, Edgar,’ Mother said in a shaking whisper, as Oliver reluctantly obliged and pulled the thing closed again. I watched Father’s eyes while the panel slid over them – his expression clear. He was pleading with me to stay out of trouble.

  ‘This had better be good, missy,’ said one of the policemen as he marched over to us and shoved us both back towards the stairs. I noticed that he didn’t address Oliver.

  ‘I just … I just wanted to see my father again,’ I said with a sniff. I was playing for sympathy, but a part of me knew that it was true.

  The other constable glared down at us both. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Upstairs, now. And if we ever catch you young’uns pulling this sort of nonsense again, we’ll throw you in one of those cells! Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Oliver and I chorused dejectedly.

  Mother’s hair was a mess, her skin pale with worry. Maddy peered out from behind her, shaking an umbrella on to the floor, and she looked just as concerned. I began to feel a little bad. ‘I’m … I’m so sorry, Mother. I don’t really have an excuse. I wanted to investigate, and we ran into Inspector Holbrook, and it all got rather …’

  ‘Out!’ said the policeman, pointing up the stairs. This time, we took the hint.

  We stood in the entrance hall of the police station, surrounded by bustling officers, as Mother ranted at me. ‘Your father forbade you from this investigating, as did I,’ she said. ‘Will it take being arrested to stop you?’ Her eyes went up to the ceiling. ‘Oh Lord, how have I raised such a hooligan?’

  Oliver shuffled uncomfortably. ‘It was important, ma’am.’ I nodded in grateful agreement.

  Mother’s lower lip trembled, but now I wasn’t certain if it was anger or sadness. ‘Not you too, Oliver. I didn’t know you were mixed up in this nonsense as well.’

  I had to persuade her. ‘We have more leads now! If you let us do this, we could prove Father innocent! If you don’t, then …’ I let the implication hang unspoken in the air between us.

  The evidence was stacked against him. He would face punishment whether he was guilty or not.

  I turned to Maddy. ‘Maddy, please—’

  She held up her hands. ‘You leave me out of this, Miss Violet! You know what your father said.’

  Of course, he was still the master, even if he was locked up. I frowned.

  ‘I had to talk to him,’ I said. ‘I needed to know more about the suspects …’

  ‘Suspects! Leads!’ Mother rolled her eyes. ‘Listen to yourself, Violet. You are not a detective, you are a girl! I have half a mind to lock you in your room until you’re eighteen!’

  Now I could feel my lower lip quavering and I bit it to stop myself. I hated it. I hated the way I was viewed as a child, and a girl besides, which was apparently worse.

  Well, if they were going to treat me like one, I was going to behave like one.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I began to sob. ‘I just wanted to see my daddy.’ I felt the tears fall from my eyes. Bones pushed his nose up against me, a look of concern on his little doggy face. I dropped down and held on to him, still crying.

  I soon realised that I wasn’t crying falsely. As the tears came faster, I knew it was real. I missed my father. I was scared of losing him. I wanted him to tell me the truth. Everything that I’d kept bottled up was spilling out into the world.

  Mother crouched and wrapped her arms round me. ‘I know,’ she said in a soothing voice. ‘I know.’ She stroked my hair.

  For a few moments we stayed there, the hustle and bustle of the police station around us melting away. I breathed in the familiar smell of my mother, a little damp from the rain, with hints of her rose-petal perfume. And the warmth of Bones, who was whining softly as if he too were crying for Father.

  I stood up and wiped my eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, with a sniff. ‘I just want to save him.’

  Mother was silent for a moment. She straightened up. ‘I’m going to ask to speak with your father,’ she said.

  We waited outside the police station for what felt like an hour, in grim silence on a park bench, while Mother spoke to the police and Father. When she came out again, there was something different about her expression, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Something was clearly weighing heavy on her thoughts. We were almost halfway home before she began to talk to me.

  Bones pulled Oliver and Maddy on ahead while Mother and I hung back. The rain had faded to a drizzle but the sky was still iron grey.

  ‘Violet,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’ I was waiting for another lecture. Instead, I got something entirely different.

  She shushed me. ‘Listen to me now. Perhaps we were wrong before.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘Oh Lord, forgive me for what I am about to say.’

  I scrunched up my face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Time is running out, and … I don’t … I don’t think the police have your father’s best interests at heart. I think perhaps someone needs to investigate.’ She took a deep, gulping breath. ‘And I think perhaps that someone might have to be you.’

  -me?’ I stammered. ‘But you said …’

  ‘I know what I said,’ she replied. ‘Desperate times, desperate measures. But please, Violet – think of your safety. Stay away from the journalists. You come home the minute you see any trouble, do you hear me? And you will tell no one.’

  Then, with a quick nod, as if the conversation had never happened, she hurried away towards the others. I was left gaping in the dust.

  It soon hit me that for the first time ever, my mother was giving me my freedom. Not only that, but she had shown some trust in my capabilities.

  I’d always felt as though I was bringing shame to the family whenever I did anything. It was always ‘Violet, stop associating with boys! Violet, practise your embroidery! Violet, stay out of your father’s business!’ Mother would say those things in hushed but angry tones, red-faced, always worrying about what the neighbours would say.

  Suddenly she had changed her tune. As much as I wanted to feel elated, I instead felt a deep and creeping dread. My mother hadn’t mentioned our desperation lightly. This was true desperation.

  I was my father’s last hope. The weight of his life rested on my shoulders.

  Maybe Inspector Holbrook was right, and I had just been playing at investigating. It was time to take things further, and now I had Mother’s backing, it suddenl
y all felt too real. Was I big enough to take on this task? Was I clever enough? Was I … enough? I had always thought I was. But what did that matter if I couldn’t prove it to the world?

  As I trotted through the drizzle to catch up, Bones turned abruptly and ran back to me, tail wagging. He jumped up and started trying to lick my face. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘You daft dog,’ I scolded. ‘At least you have faith in me.’

  He barked enthusiastically.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s catch up. We’ve got work to do …’

  The next day, now with Mother’s blessing, we left her and Maddy to distract Thomas as we headed for Ashes Lane.

  The air was crisp, the sky crystal clear but for the smoke rising from the chimneys. I’d peered through the curtains once again to find that the streets were now blessedly free of the vulture journalists, who seemed to have become bored and given up. I supposed they would make up their own salacious nonsense whether they had talked to us or not.

  We dodged fellow pedestrians, Bones swerving around their legs. Many of them gave me funny looks or whispered to each other. These people were our neighbours, but it seemed none of them had kind words to spare. I will remember that, I told myself. I had to ignore them and their gossip. One foot in front of the other.

  ‘We’re getting closer,’ I said to Oliver as we turned the corner. ‘I can feel it.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he replied. Then, after a long pause with nothing but our footfalls on the pavement, he asked: ‘What would happen to us if … if your pa … if we don’t free him? What would we do?’

  The question made the blood freeze in my veins. Oliver was trying to be gentle, I knew, but I could hear the real words hiding underneath.

  If he dies. If he goes to the scaffold.

  I marched ahead harder, until Oliver was almost jogging to keep up. Bones happily trotted along beside us. He liked when things moved quickly.

  I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have asked!’ Oliver shook his head. ‘I just thought … you’re so used to all this. This …’ He waved his hand in the air. ‘Death, stuff.’

  ‘We cannot argue with death,’ Father had often told me. ‘It is the natural way of things.’ I knew then what to say. ‘It’s not his time,’ I told Oliver firmly. ‘Today we argue with death.’

  Ashes Lane was not far from where we lived, but it was fairly rundown. It was really more of an alleyway. Crooked houses leaned over each other, windows cracked with age, wet washing dangling from lines hanging between them like rows of teeth.

  A lady with grey hair peeking out from under her cap stood beating a carpet in front of us, sending up clouds of dust. The air smelled of fish from the nearby market. I half expected Bones to run off in search of it, but he stayed by our side.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to the carpet beater. ‘Does a Miss Stone live here somewhere?’ It was a shot in the dark, but I hoped she might know.

  To my surprise, she fixed me with a glare, before marching back inside with her carpet and slamming the door.

  ‘Well, that was rather rude,’ I said.

  ‘She don’t know,’ Oliver suggested with a shrug, ‘or she just ain’t telling. Now we’re stuck.’

  Bones seemed to have other ideas. He had started sniffing along the gutter, moving quickly. ‘What is it, boy?’ I asked, but he didn’t look up. I thought about calling him back, but I remembered how he’d found the strange journal entry before. Perhaps he knew what we were looking for? ‘We’d better follow him,’ I said.

  Bones trotted on down the alley, his nose pressed to the ground. About halfway down, he stopped.

  We caught up with him, panting.

  The house he had stopped in front of was not in a good state, even compared to the rest of the alley. In fact, it looked like it had almost burned down. The windows were black, the glass cracked and melted. The stone somehow managed to look even more smoke-stained than all the other buildings in the city.

  Bones sat down on his haunches and stayed completely still. He was definitely trying to tell us something.

  ‘Does this place ring any bells?’ I asked Oliver.

  He stared up at it for a moment. ‘No,’ he said finally, with a shake of his head. ‘I don’t recognise it. But it gives me the shivers.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said in a whisper. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. It didn’t look like the nicest place to live, if anyone did indeed live there. The alleyway seemed to be sucking out all the sound of the surrounding area, in the same way that the cemetery did. Whilst it felt peaceful and otherworldly there, here it just felt … wrong.

  I listened carefully, wondering if there were any ghosts around, but the silence remained. Even running a finger over the rough and blackened stone, I couldn’t sense anything. The place felt empty and loveless. ‘What do we do?’ Oliver asked.

  I stood in silent debate with myself. Knock on the door? What else could we do? Break in? I looked down at Bones, wondering if he could perhaps find us a sneaky way to enter, but he still wasn’t moving. He began to growl quietly.

  ‘I think …’ I started, hoping my mind would fill in the right course of action.

  But I was interrupted by the sight of a face at the blackened window.

  A face I had seen before. A face I had seen peering in our very windows at home.

  The Black Widow. Miss Stone.

  I pulled Oliver back and we flattened ourselves into the next doorway, Bones pressed between us. I hardly dared to breathe. There was a creak of door hinges, and Miss Stone suddenly emerged into the alley.

  But to my immense relief, she turned away from us, and hurried in the opposite direction. For a few more moments, we stayed as still as statues, but she had soon slipped out into the street on the other side – and we were once again alone in the ominous alleyway. Bones peered out and then trotted over to the burnt house.

  ‘Where’s she going in a hurry?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘Look.’

  I was watching Bones. He had gone up to her peeling and cracked door and was sniffing around it. And then, with a gentle paw, he pushed it open.

  ‘She didn’t lock the door,’ Oliver said, as the realisation dawned on him. He turned to me, and must have seen the expression on my face. ‘No. No, miss, we can’t!’

  ‘We have to,’ I said, the decision instantly made in my mind. ‘We’re going inside.’

  e stepped into the burnt-out house, and all was quiet and dark. Bones hesitated on the threshold, but he was soon cautiously trotting inside, nose to the ground.

  I tried to take the whole place in. The room we were in seemed to be the majority of the house. The walls were blackened and crumbling, the smell of old smoke permeating the place. What I presumed was a mirror hung on one wall to the left of us, covered with a drape as if the household were in mourning. The skeletal remains of a staircase went up to the next floor, splintered wood hanging down, unusable.

  There was the hearth, a few sad embers dying in its belly, and a coal scuttle beside it. There were two threadbare chairs, and a cracked washbasin. A door at the back was open, looking like it led to another small room and presumably the outside.

  ‘More creepy in here than it was out there,’ Oliver whispered, rubbing his arms. ‘Don’t know how anyone could stand to stay for more than five minutes. Are you sure nobody died here, miss?’

  Concentrating hard, I closed my eyes and put my hand against the wall. ‘I don’t feel a thing,’ I told him truthfully. ‘No echoes, no ripples. Just silence.’

  It looked to me as if the Black Widow had just found this house and moved in. The fire must have been long ago – gutting the place, but leaving the stone walls and the dwelling either side still standing. I supposed she could have lived there before the fire, but it was hard to tell either way.

  Bones whined, and I saw he had found something underneath the destroyed staircase. It wa
s a mat on the floor, heaped with old blankets. I peered down at it curiously. ‘What’s this?’

  Oliver came over to me, treading carefully as if the place might fall down around our ears at any moment. ‘Her bed, I reckon.’

  ‘Oh.’ A feeling of sadness and embarrassment curled inside me. This was very different from the world I came from, but perhaps not so different from Oliver’s.

  But he didn’t seem to notice my reaction. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘If we have to be in here, we’d better get on with looking before she comes back. She could be here any minute.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, trying not to think about it. ‘I’ll take this room, you take the next.’

  ‘Right you are, miss,’ Oliver said nervously as he followed Bones next door.

  I crossed to the other side of the room, where it seemed the Black Widow had been sitting by the fire. A chipped cup lay on the table, with nothing inside it. I turned to look at the mantelpiece – on which perched a couple of faded photographs, without frames.

  One was unmistakably of Miss Stone, a good deal younger than she was now, sternly posed with a group of people outside a grand house. Perhaps it was one of her earlier jobs. I examined it, but there was nothing else of note.

  The other, though, was different. It was of a young pale-haired girl, perhaps Thomas’s age or younger. The picture was blurred as she was (much like Thomas) apparently not very good at sitting still. I picked this one up too, and there was writing on the back. Emily Stone, aged four and a half.

  It was the Black Widow as a young child. I wondered who her family were, what had happened to her parents. I replaced the picture carefully, and then I noticed something odd about the coal scuttle. It wasn’t filled with coal or firewood, but instead with old papers and torn books. I knelt down and pulled a few out – there were bills, flyers, ragged newspapers that looked like they’d been picked up off the street. Perhaps this was all she had to burn for warmth.

  But some of the papers underneath looked more personal, and Miss Stone’s name on them caught my eye. There were two payslips labelled with Rookwood School – I hadn’t heard of it, but the dates were after she had worked for us. Only two, though, so she hadn’t lasted long there either. Rifling through, I found another payslip, dated after that – it read: