The Spiritglass Charade

by Colleen Gleason

  “Yes.” He grew quiet again, and I searched in vain for something to say.

  Did he miss his father as much as I missed my mother?

  Was it worse for Dylan, knowing that he’d left his parents, albeit not by his own volition—or was it worse for me, whose mother had left with no explanation and little communication in a year? At least she could come back if she wanted to.

  My throat hurt and my eyes threatened to sting. I was relieved when Dylan spoke again.

  “But the thing is . . . I saved the Queen’s life. And I was the only one who could have done it. Yet I didn’t change the course of history. The Queen doesn’t die—I mean, she wasn’t supposed to die yet. And she didn’t.”

  “So you did something that only someone from the future could have done, but you didn’t change the course of history.”

  It just occurred to me that Dylan knew when Queen Victoria would die. What else about the future did he know? A shiver rushed over my shoulders, ending in an unpleasant twist in my belly. That was dangerous. And fascinating.

  “Yes. Isn’t that weird? But there are a lot of strange things about this whole mess anyway,” he muttered.

  “I should think. Time travel is quite strange in and of itself.” And yet there was a part of me fascinated by it, and its implications. Imagine if one could go back in time to the scene of a crime—just when the deed was being perpetrated?

  “But it’s not just that,” Dylan mused. “It’s . . . well, there are things in this London of 1889 that are very different from what I learned in history books. And so maybe . . . maybe I did change history—your history, this alternate history—by saving the Queen’s life.” Dylan’s expression was miserable. “And if I’m in an alternate history, how in the hell am I ever going to get home?”

  For once, I didn’t have the answer. “You saved someone’s life. That’s the most important thing. It’s always the most important thing.”

  Dylan seemed particularly moved by my words. “That’s exactly what my dad always says. Saving a life is the best work a person can do.”

  Forestalling any further conversation, the taxi lurched to a stop. We’d arrived at our destination.

  The driver engaged the vehicle’s side-lift. I appreciated these mechanized platforms, for it kept the chances to a minimum that I would trip on my skirts or catch a heel on the edge of the vehicle. The small lift was smooth and silent as it lowered me to the tiled walkway and the driver handed over my umbrella as I stepped down.

  Glasner-Mews was a clean, well-kept neighborhood filled with shops, residences, and boarding houses at all five street-levels. While it wasn’t a particularly affluent area like Hyde Park or St. James’s, it certainly wasn’t the dingy, dangerous Whitechapel where that character Pix resided.

  “We have to go to the third level.” Managing my umbrella, I led the way to the nearest street-lift while avoiding puddles of water, mud, and other waste. A demure young lady would have waited for the gentleman to offer an escorting arm, but as has been previously noted, not only did Dylan usually forget to do so, but I lacked the propriety Society requires of its young women.

  After I nearly decapitated him while digging for a ha’penny in my bag, Dylan liberated the umbrella from my clumsy grip. He held it over my head as I placed the coin on the street-lift’s small metal tongue. The tiny tray clicked back as the mechanism gulped down my fare, belching and coughing the whole time.

  The ornate brass gate opened. Taking care to gather up my skirt, which was always in danger of being trapped by the closing doors, I stepped into the grillwork-sided platform with my companion. It was a tight fit, placing me in pleasant, close proximity to Dylan. He gave me the warm, crooked smile that always made my insides swish pleasantly. I was relieved that he seemed to have pulled out of his doldrums.

  The gears groaned and chains rattled as we rose above the street-level with little jerks. Moments later, we alighted and began to walk along the narrow upper walkway toward 79-K.

  In this part of London, the buildings rose so tall and wide above the throughways they seemed almost to connect over the street. The balloonlike air-anchors attached to the cornices of each roof bumped and shifted in the sky as their weightless pull helped keep the corners of the brick structures from crashing into each other.

  Street vendors called out at all levels, hawking their wares. Because the raised walkways were so narrow, allowing hardly enough room for two people to stroll abreast, the sellers were relegated to parking their carts so half the vehicle hung out over the street below, anchored by brass manacles the size of wagon wheels—which was why the vendor-balloons were such a welcome invention. Carriages clattered along on the ground below. People shouted, dogs barked, shutters thudded, a church bell clanged . . . and feathered through it all was the familiar hiss of steam.

  “Something smells really good.” Dylan wielded my umbrella like a gentleman’s walking stick as he took in the sights.

  It was a rare event in which he wasn’t hungry, eating, or at least thinking about food. But in this case, I couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. The scents of flaming carrots, shredded-meat pies, puffed plums, and frothy vanilla teas filtered through the air.

  “Honey-Creme Mandarins, miss,” called a man from across the air-canal. “Fresh from the crystallizer, still warm!”

  “Would you like one? My treat.”

  I accepted Dylan’s offer with alacrity, for honeyed mandarins are one of my favorite sweets. He remembered to offer me a gentlemanly arm as we walked over the fly-bridge, crossing the road three levels above the ground.

  The lowest street-levels were the meanest in the sense that they were the dirtiest, dingiest, and most unpleasantly aromatic. Sewer chutes rushed alongside the roads, and the primitive walkways were narrow and often flooded with rainwater or sewage that splashed up as various forms of ground transportation rumbled past. The higher the street-level, the cleaner, lighter, and more expensive the area. The lifts were the only way to travel between levels. Therefore, if one didn’t have a coin to feed the machine (or if the mechanism was disabled), one was destined to remain at the lower level—either permanently or temporarily. And the higher the level, the greater the cost of the ride.

  It was, my father had once said in a rare moment of candidness, a way to keep the riffraff segregated from the privileged.

  Vaguely uncomfortable by this pronouncement, I nevertheless couldn’t deny its truth. Every time I was forced to pay to rise above the ground level, I couldn’t help think of his words. I wondered what it would be like to have no choice but to have my skirts constantly dragging through the muck and water—among other disadvantages.

  “Here you are, Mina.” Dylan offered me one of the small, warm bundles.

  The plum-sized orange looked delicious, its peelings folded back halfway like a lotus flower, revealing plump segments glistening with a glaze of honey-creme.

  “How do you eat it?” he asked in a low voice as we left the vendor. I couldn’t help but notice he had three more of the treats in his hand, and I hid a smile.

  “The best way is to peel off one petal at a time and eat a segment. But some people just bite in. Once it starts to cool, the honey-creme flakes off more easily, so it’s best to eat it right away.”

  We strolled back across the fly-bridge, enjoying the sweets, doing what Dylan charmingly called “people-watching.” He offered me a second mandarin, and I declined, then pointed out that he had a tiny flake of glaze on his chin. He suggested I use a napkin to dab at the corner of my mouth, and I didn’t even flush.

  We noticed a young beagle hound with ears much too long for his puppy body bounding around on the streetwalk below and stopped to watch him for a moment. Although I don’t particularly care for canine creatures, I found him to be quite adorable. He was brown-and-black-spotted over a white coat and he kept tripping over his ears.

  Spending such a pleasant time with a handsome, attentive young man, I was almost able to forget that I was a Hol
mes—a young woman destined to remain unmarried and unattached. We Holmeses, as Uncle Sherlock had pontificated many times, were above the base emotions that affected (and, he claimed, weakened) other people, for our lives and minds were dedicated to cold, factual observation and clean, logical deduction. Emotions such as love or anger or fear simply clouded the brain and were a waste of energy.

  And according to my uncle and father, as a female I was even more at risk of such weakness.

  At last, the idyll ended as we reached 79-K. As Dylan went to throw the glaze-filled papers away, I pushed the call button on the door. A bell chimed, then there was a soft humming sound. A peephole door rolled open on invisible gears, revealing a brown eye set beneath a thick brow.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Ellner?” I asked. “I’m here to visit Mrs. Yingling.”

  “Oh, well, then, one moment, please.”

  “Do you mind if I wait outside?” Dylan asked. “I want to watch that airship come through here. And that vendor with the meat-pies is calling my name.”

  I hadn’t heard anyone shouting Dylan, but I shook my head. “Not at all.” Watching one of the oblong airships make its way between the buildings to a mooring station was always a sight to behold.

  I turned back to 79-K. The peephole had eased closed and I heard it latch into place, then the door swung open. Now I was able to see that the brown eye belonged to a homely woman who stood no taller than my shoulder.

  Calluses on her fingers—a hand-knitter.

  Well-mended, relatively new clothing, clean shoes, ivory comb in hair—pride in her appearance, has an income that keeps food on the table and clothing in the trunks.

  No wedding ring, no other jewelry, no sign of male presence—the Mrs. was widowed.

  And, from all appearances, comfortably prosperous on her own.

  “You’re here to visit Yrmintrude, then. I haven’t seen her yet today, but come in, come in. She come back in after tea yesterday from visitin’ ’er newest, most luc’ative client. Would be a good thing, I ’ave t’say, because Yrmy—well, now I should stop rambling. Her room’s down this way.” She beckoned for me to follow her slow progress down a narrow hallway. Mrs. Ellner had a pronounced limp, due to a misaligned ankle that needed to be adjusted, and her pace was maddeningly slow.

  We passed three doors before my guide stopped, and she rapped on the door. “Yrmy, you have a visitor.” Then she turned to me and explained, “If you was a man, I’d have you be waiting in the public parlor for her. But her female clients, well, what ’arm can it be to allow them to wait in the hall? I know why you’re here, and it’s of a personal matter, of course, so it’s best not to be seen.” She smiled knowingly.

  When we heard no sounds beyond the door, Mrs. Ellner knocked again, more loudly this time. “Yrmintrude! You’ve got yourself a visitor!”

  “Perhaps she’s in a back room and can’t hear you.” I’d felt a prickling certainty that something was wrong.

  “It’s only one room. She cain’t help but hear me.” My concern was reflected in the landlady’s eyes, and she produced a key.

  A sharp clink, the clunk of a bolt being thrown open, and then the door swung wide.

  “Yrmy!” Mrs. Ellner lumbered past me with newfound speed.

  I followed more slowly, already sniffing the air and scanning the chamber.

  There was no need to rush, for it was obvious Mrs. Yingling wasn’t going to be awakening ever again.

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes Investigates

  Mrs. Yingling lay beneath a thin blanket, her head on a pillow. She could have been sleeping, except that the rousing cries emitting from her landlady’s mouth hadn’t caused even a twitch.

  Mrs. Ellner had repeated her shrieks of “Oh my gad” countless times before she accepted the fact that her friend was deceased. Fortunately, I was able to intercept her before she disrupted the crime scene too much. There was no blood, no obvious sign of injury, but it was immediately clear to me Mrs. Yingling had not died a natural death.

  “Perhaps you might want to notify the police,” I suggested.

  “The police?”

  “Indeed. Your friend has been murdered and the Met generally like to investigate such events.” I was proud of myself for leaving out the phrase “attempt to,” for my uncle would not have been so circumspect.

  “But how could she be murdered? She . . . there’s no blood. No one was here—”

  “Mrs. Yingling was left-handed, was she not?”

  “Why, yes, I do recall she was, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “It means she was murdered. I’ll remain here and make certain the scene isn’t contaminated—”

  “The what?”

  I drew in an impatient breath. “I’ll make certain no one disturbs any clues. Can you send someone to call for the authorities?”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose I best.” She hobbled toward the door. “There’s that young fellow what lives just above Mr. and Mrs. Barnley . . . I’ll call him.”

  I didn’t hear the rest of her speech, for I was busy examining the chamber. Much as I was loathe to have the authorities bumbling about, they had to be notified. Therefore, I had to work quickly to finish my investigation before they arrived. I wished mightily I had brought my larger reticule, complete with my new, self-mounting Ocular-Magnifyer and other investigative tools . . . but I hadn’t expected to come upon a murder. Since this wasn’t the first time I’d been caught unprepared at a crime scene, I was doubly irritated with myself.

  The space was fairly generous for being a boardinghouse room. Two windows offered a modicum of light, despite the neighboring building hardly two arms’ lengths away. A new rug and expensive wool cloak indicated a recent change in Mrs. Yingling’s financial situation.

  I checked the haphazard stack of books on the floor next to the bed and wasn’t surprised to find that the sensational novels of Wilkie Collins and Mrs. Radcliffe, with their ghostly characters and screaming women in white nightgowns, made up a good portion of the collection. A pile of papers rested neatly on the small table acting as a desk. A chair was ajar from the writing surface as if someone had just stood up and walked away, leaving a cup and pencil to the right of the papers.

  Inside a trunk I found two false hands cuffed with lace and attached to strong, nearly visible threads along with a filmy white material resembling a shroud. There was also a small, curious device that produced a puff of cool, foul-scented air as well as a small slate with a pencil hidden in its frame—obviously for “spirit-writing.” It appeared I had been correct in my opinion that Mrs. Yingling was a fraud.

  And now she’d been murdered. But why? And by whom?

  Could it be a coincidence that, merely the day after performing a fake séance for the niece of Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Yingling had been found murdered? I highly doubted it.

  It could have been no more than eight minutes since Mrs. Ellner left, but I heard the sounds of rapid footsteps approaching. The authorities.

  Aware my time was running short, I bent over the unfortunate medium’s body for further examination. My observations confirmed the lack of injury or any mark on the corpse, at least insofar as what was revealed by her longsleeved night rail. She appeared just as I’m certain the perpetrator intended: a frail, elderly woman who’d died painlessly in her sleep.

  Except . . . I peered more closely at the skin near her mouth. Drat that I didn’t have my Magnifyer with me, but even with the naked eye, I could see a trace of red around her lips. My attention returned briefly to the cup on the table and I sniffed at the air once more. And smiled in satisfaction.

  The footsteps, which had been rushing closer, came to an abrupt halt in the doorway. I heard an odd strangled sound and looked up at the newcomer.

  “Inspector Grayling.” I straightened abruptly from my examination of the body.

  “Miss Holmes. I hardly know what to say.” His voice was filled with irony and something like distaste.

>   “That is quite unusual,” I replied coolly, despite the heat rushing over my cheeks. “You, having nothing to say.” I was trying to free my recalcitrant heel, which had somehow gotten caught in the lace of my petticoats, without exposing either of my ankles. Or the fact that I was struggling to do so. Pressing my advantage—if I actually had one—I continued, “Has the Scotland Yard uniform changed, or were you merely on a day off?”

  My comment was prompted by his casual state of dress. He wore well-fitting brown Betrovian wool trousers perhaps two years out of fashion but nevertheless well maintained. His waistcoat was missing, and he wore only a white shirt and a hastily flung-on coat, as evidenced by the misaligned seams over his broad shoulders. One of the braces that held up his trousers peeked from the off-kilter neckline of his coat. He lacked both hat and gloves (although that wasn’t unusual for the young inspector). He was due for a shave. However, his shoes were buffed and clean.

  “My residence,” he said, his voice as emotionless as mine, “happens to be three blocks from here. Mrs. Ellner is an acquaintance of my neighbors, and as such, I was summoned from what, yes, happened to be a morning spent at home. I had a late night last night.” His curling, gingery hair did appear rumpled, and his face slightly ruddy due to his Scottish heritage as well as his obvious effort in arriving expediently at the scene.

  “At the theater, perhaps?” I asked, trying and failing to imagine him escorting a young woman, dressed in frilly pink or sunny yellow, to a show. “Or Cremayne?” The old park, though not as popular as it once was, offered street-jugglers, pleasant walks, and other entertainments. I had never been there myself, but I understood it was a pleasant place for a group of young people to pass an evening’s time. “Perhaps a music hall?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Instead of elaborating, he walked into the chamber, examining it as I had upon my entrance. I closed my eyes, sending a hope off into the ether that he wouldn’t mention anything about the Ocular-Magnifyer that I should have had with me. The one he had sent to me after the Affair of the Clockwork Scarab, to replace one that had broken in his presence.