“A governess position?” repeated Miss Bickers, looking at Mirabella as if she had lost her mind.
Mirabella felt some guilt, knowing that she had just been assigned the most marvelous of positions—to assist on a case with the brilliant Sherlock Holmes! Such good fortune she never could have imagined. She had no idea what the assignment involved—other than the fact that she was required to have fine apparel, so it was clear that she was to have a visible part—if only for an instant and however insignificant.
“I agree that being a governess is unlikely to be the secret wish of any girl’s heart—being low paying and demanding—but it is a respectable position and is the highest attainment your most intelligent girls could strive for,” Mirabella replied. “And yet the curriculum at Lady Graham’s does not prepare even your top students for such a post. Neither is such a limited subject base sufficient for any girl to hope to marry well.”
“Marry well?” Miss Bickers laughed. Mirabella was encouraged, at least, that her companion’s indignation had been turned to merriment. “A poor girl can’t ‘ope to marry well! Unless she is the most beautiful of gulls.”
Miss Bickers moved her eyes along Mirabella, indicating that she had no great opinion of the younger woman’s beauty.
Mirabella sighed self-consciously. She had heretofore believed herself to look presentable if not becoming in a white lace blouse, a black velvet choker with a pale blue cameo, a blue linen skirt, and a straw hat with peonies on it.
She bit her lip. Her own beauty, or more likely the lack therein, had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand, and well Miss Bickers knew it. The point was, as much as Mirabella felt that the poor deserved the same opportunities as the rich, even she would prefer to see the girls trained to work in servitude to the middle and upper classes—like herself—than to have no training in anything at all.
That was a recipe for disaster.
“Is that what you want, miss? To marry well?” Miss Bickers inquired in an acerbic politeness.
“Oh, no! I want to enter university and study science. I’m saving all my money to do so.” Again, she felt a twinge of guilt. She was supposed to be focused on chemistry and biology—and, for some reason, the thought of detective work had her giddy with excitement.
Perhaps Sherlock Holmes’ madness is contagious.
“I sees. You have a job and you want to enter university. And what would happen after that?”
“Well, I would be a scientist. I have ideas, you know.” And I certainly will not feel guilty for having dreams!
“Ah.” Miss Bickers replied. “I have ideas too, but the money don’t fall out of the sky.”
Having delivered her commentary along with undisguised regalement, Miss Bickers left the room and returned with a tin box. The older woman scrutinized Mirabella’s receipts, pulling several crisp, new pound notes out from the tin box which contained a great deal of cash to Mirabella’s way of thinking.
Miss Bickers made very neat entries into a ledger, adding the numbers accurately in her head, and handed the notes to Mirabella. It appeared that the headmistress was qualified to teach elementary mathematics at least.
“I hope you do not take offence at my interest in the curriculum, Miss Bickers,” Mirabella murmured contritely. “I only think of the girls’ futures.”
“Their future, you say?” Miss Bickers’ eyes scrutinized her with both disdain and ridicule. “Let me tell you about my past.”
“Well, certainly, Miss Bickers, if you think—”
“First of all, many of these childrens here was abandoned.”
“Yes, I expect so.” Mirabella did know that child abandonment was rampant. London was a young town, with one-third of the population youth, many of them on the street.
“Did you know, miss, that in some places such as this, the nurses administer Godfrey’s Cordial to the young-uns, for the colic in babies?”
“A cordial? What do you mean, Miss Bickers?”
“A mix of opium and treacle,” Miss Bickers replied.
Gasp! Mirabella threw her hand over her mouth.
“What do you know about the workhouses, missy?” Miss Bickers persisted.
“Well . . . I . . . only what I read . . .” Mirabella replied, somewhat startled at the intensity of Miss Bickers’ gaze.
“You don’t know nuthin’, miss,” snapped Miss Bickers, scowling. “Just as I thought. What you read. You and your book learnin’ makes you think you know everthin’.”
“And were you . . . did you live . . . ?” asked Mirabella, suddenly concerned.
“I’ll tell you somethin’, Miss Hoighty Toighty. These girls are as lucky as can be. They have food and they only works a few hours a day. Most of ‘em ain’t sick—and when they is, we have a real doctor. I rarely discipline the little knee biters and I lets them do as they please. Do you know how’s orphans on the streets get their next meal?”
“Oh, yes, I keep my eyes open, Miss Bickers,” she replied confidently, nodding her head. “I’ve seen children employed as chimney sweeps, errand boys, shoe blacks, and selling matches and flowers.”
And reporting on criminal activity. Sherlock Holmes’ street urchins, a most industrious group of boys termed the Baker Street Irregulars, made up to a shilling a day—and sometimes up to a guinea if they produced some piece of truly important information. “And I suspect that charity steps in to help.”
“Charity? Ha! Ha! They ain’t no charity in London,” she spat. “Leastways very little. No, the youngin’s live meal to meal by begging, crime, working in factories, mines, and sweatshops. And by selling themselves to prostitution, that’s how.”
“Oh, my!” Mirabella reddened.
“Does the suffering of others embarrass ye, miss?” asked Miss Bickers. “Prepare to be embarrassed. You well-to-dos don’t know nuthin’ of what the poor endure.”
“Well-to do? I am not rich! I am a working girl. Why, I work night and day for my employer, as needed, and when I’m not working, I am studying. I also help my aunt with her chores.”
Miss Bickers rolled her eyes at her. “Work? You don’t know nuthin’ about work, miss. Me pa he worked in the glue factory and me ma made soap. They never stopped workin’ and we almost starved. We lived in a tenement house with a dirt floor and a tin roof until me pa died of cholera and me ma died of typhus, as did most of the younguns. When me ma and pa died, I went into a workhouse at the age of twelve. Most of those who entered wif’ me is now dead.” She sniffed. “My family was real people to me what I loved—they was not insects!”
“Oh, Miss Bickers,” whispered Mirabella, wiping her eyes. “I am so sorry.” She admonished herself for her insensitivity. It was not that long ago that two thousand open sewers drained into the Thames, the river being the source of London’s drinking water. Cholera and typhus, along with other water-borne diseases, were, not surprisingly, rampant. No effort was made to solve the problem until the odor of the Thames offended Parliament itself, huge noses peeking out from under white wigs in dismay.
Mirabella did the math in her head; Miss Bickers would have been about ten years old at the time of “The Great Stink,” in the summer of eighteen hundred fifty eight.
“What with the Poor Law which divided the poor into the deserving and the undeserving,” Miss Bickers replied with a sneer. “Guess which one we was?”
“But the Poor Law established aid for the poor!” exclaimed Mirabella, astonished.
“See what your book learnin’ did for ye?” Miss Bickers chuckled though she did not appear amused. “The Poor Law done away with all forms of aid. Except fer the workhouses which are no more than prisons!”
“Prisons for the poor . . .” murmured Mirabella.
“They’s no visitors allowed inside and no passes out.” Miss Bickers lowered her voice and moved closer to her. “What’s more, do you know that families are separated when they enters the workhouses? They even separated mothers from their babies. I know of one woman who wanted to
nurse her infant who was sick, and the guard took away the woman’s clothes and beat her for crying fer her child.”
Mirabella gasped, stepping back and involuntarily running her hands along her pale blue linen skirt. The sound of her brown boot hitting the stone floor was the only sound to reach her ears.
“You see, miss,” Miss Bickers shrugged, the misplaced brown velvet bow on her chest somehow intimidating. “There ain’t no English and science classes in the workhouses. The fourteen-hour work days don’t allow much time for that.”
Mirabella felt ashamed of her earlier internal commentary on Miss Bickers’ English skills and wondered how the older woman managed to learn anything—and to live. “How did you survive, Miss Bickers?”
“By using this.” Miss Bickers tapped her index finger on her forehead. “Here we lives in the richest country in the world. But the rich likes to blame the poor for their own misfortune. The Whigs made the workhouses because they want to punish the poor for bein’ poor. They likes to say as how the poor ‘as learned to work the system. But if you asks me,” Miss Bickers continued, “the rich is the ones who ‘ave figured out how to work the system.”
“And yet, every now and again, someone slips through the cracks and advances, like yourself, Miss Bickers.”
“We will all finish in the station we was born into,” Miss Bickers slammed the tin box shut.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
“Good day, Miss Bickers. My class awaits.” Mirabella curtseyed and thanked Miss Bickers.
“I’m not accustomed to bein’ idle meself. Go study your science.” Miss Bickers turned on her heel and walked away, the ‘click, click’ of her brown leather shoes hitting the stone floor with some force.
As Mirabella walked to her classroom, it struck her as odd that a person with such a background as Miss Bickers would have an expensive ruby as a family heirloom. Wouldn’t the parents have sold it for food and medical care? Unless it had enormous sentimental value, which was difficult to envision.
“Good morning, class.” Mirabella entered the meager room with grey stone floors and worn wooden walls and once again wished they had a real science laboratory. She could not help but think of the fine laboratory—though small—in Sherlock Holmes’ flat with gleaming glassware, nicely labeled jars, and state-of-the art equipment.
The laboratory I have been forbidden to use.
“Good morning, Miss Hudson,” her class of three—no four—beamed at her. She was honestly surprised when anyone but Amity came back even though there were some seventy girls in the orphanage. Most of the girls in the hallway had a vacuous expression, unlike these four, as bright as rays of sunshine.
“Amity. Susan. Gloria. And who do we have here?” Mirabella nodded to a red-headed cherub.
“My name is Candice,” the little girl replied, smiling, adding proudly. “My father was a police constable.”
“How very impressive!” exclaimed Mirabella. “And do you have an interest in science, Candice?”
Candice shook her head. “No, but I do like these other girls. And I heard there was food.”
A hand shot up.
“Yes, Amity?”
“Did you get a new position, Miss Hudson?” the little girl whose parents had died in a fire asked. Somehow Amity and her younger sister, Susan, had escaped the fire. “After you lost your other job?”
“Why, yes, Amity, how did you know?”
“I listened,” the always alert and watchful child with short honey-toned hair and large golden brown eyes shrugged.
“Who told you, Amity?” Mirabella asked.
“A beautiful, tall girl with black eyes riding a horse and carrying a sword.”
“How interesting, Amity,” Mirabella replied. It was not unusual for children who had lost everything to have overactive imaginations—although Amity had had her eleventh birthday now and was a bit old for such wild tales.
Still, Mirabella could not bring herself to correct Amity; she was glad for any comfort the children could find. Ironically, Amity—who rarely emerged from her fantasy world—was the only one of her students who appeared to have a natural ability in math and science. The child had a way of knowing.
“But the sword is very sharp,” Amity shuddered.
“First,” Mirabella reached into her bag, pulling out four beautiful red apples—one for her and one for each of . . . oh no, five total today. She felt her stomach growl. Oh, she couldn’t bear to ask anyone to share, they always looked so hungry, and how their eyes lit up to see those apples.
Ignoring her own hunger, Mirabella murmured, “Nourishment is important for the brain to work at its best.”
“That’s right!” the girls nodded in vehement agreement.
“May I ask you, class, why you always seem so hungry? Aren’t you fed here?”
Everyone moaned in unison.
“What is it class?”
“Mr. McVittie is horrible,” Susan remarked, evincing a contorted facial expression.
“Who is Mr. McVittie?” she asked softly.
“The cook,” explained Amity.
“He doesn’t know how to cook,” added Gloria, giggling as she set down her needlepoint, her notebook unopened.
“We had a very nice ham on Sunday,” corrected Candice, her carrot-red hair bobbing, offsetting her copper-colored eyes beautifully. Candice looked to be the healthiest of the girls. “I’m nine years old you know!”
“Oh, that ham was so good!” added blonde Susan, tiny for an eight-year-old.
“Even the rolls tasted like bread instead of sawdust,” Gloria added. Gloria was the prettiest child Mirabella had ever seen, with brunette hair, dark eyes, dimples, and a smile that would warm the sun.
“That’s because Candy made them,” stated Susan matter-of-factly.
“Is it true?” asked Mirabella of the girls. “Did Candice make the rolls?”
Amity nodded. “The only way we ever have anything good is when Candice helps in the kitchen.”
“But I have to have special permission,” Candice explained. “Miss Bickers says there is lots of big equipment in the kitchen and she has to be sure it is safe before I can help.”
Mirabella raised her eyebrows. Miss Bickers didn’t strike her as the over-protective type. “Hmmm . . . and what else do you know about Miss Bickers, Candice?”
Candice blushed, as if she knew a great secret. “Her first name is Minerva.”
“How did you know that, Candice?”
“I overheard Mr. McVittie calling her by her first name.” Candice giggled, joined in by all the little girls.
How strange. It would be very odd for a fellow employee to call the headmistress by her first name.
“Today, class, we are going to study finger printing.” Mirabella cleared her throat. Now that the apples had been eaten, Mirabella began the class, placing a brown wooden box on the desk and opening it. “The authorities dismiss finger printing, treating it as an art form. But I foresee that there will be enormous implications for the identification of criminals.”
Susan began waving her hand wildly. Despite resembling a Dresden doll, she was obviously athletic, and in addition, Mirabella knew for a fact that the little girl had a lovely singing voice.
“Yes Susan?”
“What is a criminal?”
“That’s the bad guy, Sukey,” answered Gloria, rolling her eyes.
“Quite right,” agreed Mirabella. “Please come to the table and bring your notebooks.”
Gloria reluctantly set down her needlepoint and joined the other girls.
First the young girls went over their arithmetic. “You are doing very well class. Miss Bickers is doing a good job.”
“And now for a very special treat. Everyone has a unique fingerprint,” Mirabella continued. “No two are alike, even among identical twins. There are twelve distinct classifications. Your assignment will be to fingerprint your friends, label them, and classify them, until we have each of the twelve categ
ories represented.”
Mirabella removed from the wooden box the ink, a blotter, a roller, a rag, a small bottle of turpentine, a piece of wood, and a record book. She rolled a thin layer of ink on the wood piece and blotted it, wiping her hands on the rag. “I am now blotting the ink, class, to insure that there is not so much ink as to saturate the skin. A very small amount of ink is needed. If we smudge the ink, we won’t be able to see the detail in the fingerprint.”
“Hold the other person’s thumb, you must apply the pressure, don’t allow your subject to do it.” She then took Susan’s little thumb firmly in her hand, rolling the thumb slowly on the black ink. “Go slowly but with no pauses to insure an even print.”
“Roll towards Susan for the thumbprint, starting with the point of most resistance.” Susan’s thumb was then placed on the record book, rolling towards Susan from the point of most to least resistance.
“Sukey’s looks like little loops!” Amity exclaimed, looking at Susan’s thumbprint.
“No, it’s whirly-whirls!” Susan stated.
“It’s both,” replied Mirabella. “You see these curves? Do you see where the ridge ends?”
“But this one splits into other ridges,” Susan considered.
“Excellent observation!” Mirabella approved. “These are two of the important distinctions which make each fingerprint unique: where the ridges end—and where they split into other ridges.”
“Like a road,” Candice stated.
“Or a tree with branches!” Susan interjected. “With little swirly birds singing on them.”
“Oh, no! A smudge!” Gloria exclaimed, her eye attuned to every deviation.
“The utmost detail must be seen. Move at a steady pace with an even amount of pressure to get the least amount of smudges. Now, Amity, you take Candice’s thumbprint.”
“I’ll mess it up!” exclaimed Amity.
“Then we’ll do it again,” replied Mirabella. “This is just for practice. It’s the only way to learn. I’ll tell you a secret: most of the policemen at Scotland Yard don’t know how to do this.”
“No!” the girls all replied in unison and astonishment.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Sword Princess Page 6