She shuddered. “So I ran away! He frightened me so.”
“He meant to. How did the woman respond?”
“Not at all. She was like a sleepwalker. I don’t think she even knew I was there.”
“How well did you see her?”
“I know it was Alcinda,” she said stubbornly. “It absolutely, positively was! Isn’t there someone you know so well that you can recognize them from a distance, in the dark, without a word spoken? It was her. I know it. My sister is alive, and he’s got her.”
Tears shone in her blue eyes. “Oh, why did I have to run away! I am such a rotten coward! I should have followed them, seen where he took her, but I let him frighten me.”
“You were quite right to flee,” I said firmly. “It would be horribly dangerous—and utterly foolish—for a lone girl to try to pit herself against a grown man, especially one who spoke to her like that.”
“You must help me find her. Please, say you will, Miss Lane!”
I felt strangely torn. It was absurd, her story, and it made no difference that she obviously believed what she said. She must be fantasizing. And yet—
“Have you told anyone else? Did you tell your father?”
She nodded, looked wretched. “He thinks my brain has been affected by grief, and now he agrees with his wife that visiting the cemetery has such a bad effect, I’m forbidden to go there.” Her shoulders slumped. “You believe me, don’t you? I swear it’s all true. You must take this case. Jesperson and Lane are probably the only people in London clever enough to figure it out.”
For a moment I was distracted by the question of where this child had heard of our fledgling business, but I did not ask because it could not possibly matter. She was a child, she was grieving, she could not accept the reality of her loss. There was no case. I was about to tell her so, when she spoke again.
“There is another clue. In the book.” She nodded at Alcinda’s drawing book, still in my hands. “Towards the back, my sister wrote a few pages I can’t read. It might be Latin, or some other language. I’m sure it’s important.”
I found the pages. They were not in Latin. Although I could make no sense out of the jumble of letters and symbols, I knew Mr. Jesperson would enjoy the challenge; codes and ciphers were meat and drink to him. I realized then that although I did not believe we would find Alcinda Travers alive, I had decided we must help her little sister, somehow.
“Let me be honest with you,” I said. “I do not think your sister is alive somewhere, and I do not want to encourage you in false hopes. But there does seem to be some mystery connected with her death, and it may have to do the man you met in the cemetery. My partner, Mr. Jesperson, should be able to decipher these notes left behind by your sister, and the picture should enable us to uncover the man’s identity. After that, we may discuss whether or not there is anything to be investigated.”
Despite all that I had said to discourage her hope, she was positively glowing with it now as she thanked me.
I asked a few pertinent questions—the location of the cemetery, the identity of the physician who had made the official verdict of death, whether Alcinda had any suitors, and how best to contact my young client if we needed more information or had news to impart.
“Our address is inside the front cover of Alcinda’s book,” she said. “Our telephone number, too, although my stepmother would find it awfully suspicious if someone she didn’t know wrote or telephoned to me—I will come back here.”
“If you come tomorrow afternoon, you can meet Mr. Jesperson,” I told her.
Very late in the day, a messenger arrived with a note from Mr. Jesperson, written on headed notepaper from his club, informing Mrs. Jesperson and me that he had been invited to dine and we should not wait for him.
Women are generally responsible for all the cooking and planning of meals in private households, but I have never known any to bother about “proper meals” without a man around. Left to ourselves, we glory in “feasting”—standing at the kitchen table, or wrapped in blankets before the fire—on whatever wild assortment we can forage from the larder, or delight in a “nursery tea” of soft-boiled eggs with bread and butter; or dine on tea and cakes, or apples and cheese, while reading.
It required no discussion for us to agree that soup, beef, potatoes and all should be held over for the following day, and bread and cheese would satisfy us.
“We can have the apple tart—easy enough to make another tomorrow,” Mrs. Jesperson said. “Shall we eat in here, or … ?”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’ll take a plate to my room.”
“As you wish, Miss Lane.”
Although I felt sorry for it, a certain chill had come between us. “Call me Edith,” she had urged, more than once, but as I had not responded with a matching invitation, she must still call me “Miss Lane,” while I, to avoid giving further offense, hardly knew how to address her.
Mrs. Jesperson was an excellent woman, capable, kind, and intelligent. She might not have the brilliance of her son, but she was no fool, and I should have been grateful for her friendship. Having taken me in, knowing nothing about me, she continued to provide room and board without asking, or getting, anything in return. Of course, she did this to please her son. Many mothers must find themselves in a similar situation, forced to coexist with an unsympathetic younger woman, but our situation was rather different.
Jasper and I had come together through mutual liking and respect, with a view to business, but as we’d yet to see a ha’penny’s profit, our detective agency was more like an expensive hobby. This fine front bedroom, which might have been rented to a paying lodger, was mine gratis, and all my meals provided, even my laundry done, by the woman who kept us all on her own meager inheritance.
Being dependent had never made me happy. I longed to prove that Mrs. Jesperson’s investment had been a wise one; I did not know how much longer I could stay here without earning my keep. Jasper did not see the problem—for him, there was no problem. Edith Jesperson was his mother, after all, and he’d never known life without her capable, comforting support behind him. He was young, male, and utterly confident that any investment in his talents would be repaid a thousandfold—in time.
Time, I must give it time. I reminded myself that we had been in partnership for a mere six weeks, and then I settled down to my supper and the absorbing company of a book about the adventures of an intrepid lady traveler in Lapland.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found that Jesperson was ahead of me, behind the big desk, already at work.
“You’re up early,” I began, before reading the story in his wilted collar, stained cuffs, and faint golden stubble on his chin. “Or shall I say late? When did you get in?”
He gave me a vague look. “Oh, a few hours ago, I suppose.”
“What has kept you so absorbed?”
“Why, what do you suppose? You left it for me to decipher.” I saw he had been at work on Alcinda’s drawing book.
“You have managed it?”
“It was not too difficult, but as my head was none too clear when I began, I made some false starts. But once I’d cracked it—what an intriguing story! I can hardly wait to hear the rest of the case—some mystery, I presume, surrounding the young lady’s sudden demise and disappearance of her body?”
I stared, then slowly shook my head. “Sudden demise, yes, but the body was buried. Some weeks after, her sister saw what at first she took for a ghost in the graveyard.” I recounted the story as efficiently as I could, referring him to the pencil sketch.
He gave it a long, hard look. “Mr. S, I presume.” He rose then and handed me his notes. “You may like to read Miss Travers’s account while I make myself more presentable. It is—odd. You are ready to go out?”
I nodded uncertainly. “Yes, but where—?”
“To the cemetery, of course.”
(What follows is J.J.’s transcription)
To be reunited with my beloved
mother is all I have ever wanted—to feel her presence and know she is close to me. When I was a little child, I used to talk to her every night. After rote prayers to a God I could not imagine, I turned more eagerly to share my hopes, fears, and experiences with my beloved Mama. I used to think that she answered my questions by responding to me in dreams, or leaving hidden messages in daily life, things that to others would appear meaningless, that only I would notice and understand.
As I grew older, I lost my faith, yet never managed to give up the belief that Mama, wherever she may be, is still watching over me. But it is hard to only believe, to take it on trust, never to know. Never to know, that is, until it is too late, and I, too, am dead. Until that time, my conversations with her would remain one-sided, and I would continue to be haunted by the fear that I was only talking to myself—that no one was listening—that there was no one to hear my questions and confessions because there is no survival of physical death, no spirit independent of the body.
I don’t want to believe that. I am, perhaps, too intellectual, too modern, for my own comfort! How lovely it would be to sink into the warm comfort of established religion …
Some part of me does still believe. I think that when I die, I will be reunited with Mama. But if I die when I am wrinkled and toothless and wandering in my wits, like that old crone we see sometimes at the back of the church, mumbling away to herself and disrupting the services with her laughter … why, I might not even know my own mother, or she know me—horrible!!
I don’t want that. I want death on my own terms.
I know what I am about to do is not without danger. I admit, I am frightened, but now that Mr. S has shown me what is possible, I must see for myself.
The Ancient Egyptians had their guides to the afterlife, and the Buddhist Masters in the High Himalayas also—many cultures have found it worthwhile to instruct the living and prepare them for the life to come, but our own “civilized” society prefers to pretend that death cannot be known except once, finally, at the end of life. Mr. S has told me that death does not have to be the country from which no traveler returns; he has gone there and returned himself, more than once, and has agreed—at last!—to share his knowledge with me.
He is a strange man. I appreciate his wisdom in the ways of the afterlife, and am ever so grateful that he has agreed to help me, but he makes me uneasy. Sometimes, when he looks at me, I feel he wants something, that he expects that I understand what he wants from me, but then, just as I think he might try to make love to me—instead, he remarks on my youth and innocence, and advises me to wait a few years before embarking on this great adventure.
So perhaps I have misinterpreted those looks. But it is too late, far too late, for him to stop me. He has told me what must be done and provided me with the means, and I mean to do it tonight.
He would be cross if he knew I was writing this—even so carefully hidden—for I promised not to say a word to anyone, about him, or about the plan we have agreed. And I have told no one although the temptation to share it with Felicity was strong. But she is still a child. She might tell Father.
I write this to say that I am going to die tonight, but my death will not be—is not meant to be—forever. I have no wish to be a suicide. I want my second death, the real one, to be only after many, many years of living. This first death is an exploration, a way of learning the truth.
If it goes wrong, I am deeply sorry, but that is a risk I must take. Felicity, if you have deciphered these words, let me tell you that I love you dearly and if it is permitted to me, I shall continue to watch over you from another plane, as I feel my own mother watches over me. I hope you will understand, and forgive me, if I have gone, a bit too soon, to a better place. We will meet again.
The cemetery was quite new—Alcinda’s mother must have been one of the first to be interred there—and when we arrived at the unassuming gates that led into the Park Grove Cemetery, we saw at once that, unlike the larger modern graveyards of London, it had not been designed as a destination for visitors who might wish to spend a quiet hour of reflection, but for the sole purpose of storing dead bodies underground.
In my childhood, I had played in the local churchyard, and I remembered family excursions to Highgate Cemetery, where my uncle and aunt and a grandfather were buried. I had imagined Alcinda’s visits to her mother’s grave taking place in a similar setting, watched over by solemn stone angels and women in classical draperies, surrounded by weeping willows and mournful, ivy-clad trees. I expected mausoleums and family enclosures, statues, tombstones decorated with curious symbols, all that attractive paraphernalia of mourning which so often appeals to girls of a certain age and disposition.
But this modern cemetery, despite its evocative name, had few trees, no groves, and was nothing like my idea of a park. We saw not a single statue or decorative monument, and the gravestones were uniformly plain. With the graves laid out on strict gridlines, the effect was strict and utilitarian, reminding me of a school dormitory or a military barracks. My contemporaries may mock the sentimental, elaborate rituals of mourning that we grew up with, and one might well argue that the dead care not where their bones are stored, but the Park Grove Cemetery was like a glimpse into a well-organized but brutally impersonal future, offering nothing to comfort the living. There was little reason, one would have thought, to ever visit this place after the funeral, which made Alcinda’s obsession seem all the stranger.
“I see now why there were no sketches of crumbling, ivy-shrouded tombstones or statues in Miss Travers’s drawing book,” said Jesperson as we strolled along one straight dull path after another.
“But not why she bothered to bring her book and pencils along at all.”
“Surely the secretive Mr. S did not allow her to sketch him from life.”
I agreed it was more likely that she had drawn him from memory.
“Let us see if there is a caretaker here, who might recognize his face,” he said, and we turned back towards the entrance, where we had noticed a tidy little gatehouse.
At that moment, the rain, which had been threatening for so long, finally burst free of the heavy grey clouds above our heads, and we arrived not as the sober, mournful visitors we had hoped to appear, but out of breath, disheveled, and damp.
A small, spry, bald little man in hairy tweeds opened the door almost as soon as Jesperson’s knuckles collided with its outside surface. He was eager to welcome us inside, all the while making so many apologies for the rain that it might have been his personal responsibility that it had fallen.
“Please, ma’am, sit by the fire, it’ll warm you up nicely and you’ll be dry in no time,” he said, directing me to a chintz-covered armchair nearest the hearth. The room was small, and oversupplied with chairs.
Pouring us cups of tea—he had just brewed a fresh pot, he would not take no for an answer—he continued to express his regrets about the weather and assured us we were welcome to stay as long as we liked.
Jesperson managed to insert a question into our host’s hospitable flow: “I assume you are the caretaker—or should we call you the guard?”
“Why, bless you, sir, I am both of those, and more: Caretaker, watchman, guard, head gardener, gravedigger, spare mourner, and guide, should a guide be needed,” he said proudly. “Eric Bailey at your service. If you want to know anything about Park Grove Cemetery—past, present, or future—I’m the man to ask. Or perhaps you’d like to take away one of our informative brochures, to read at your leisure?”
“Thank you—most kind—” murmured Jesperson, putting out his hand for the little booklet but distracted by something on the wall.
Following his gaze, I saw a system of bells with numbers and letters beneath each one, reminiscent of something I had seen in large houses for summoning servants although I could not think how that would serve in a graveyard.
“If you was thinking to purchase a plot, I’m happy to answer your questions, but I don’t handle that side of the business, so I�
��d have to refer you to—”
“No, no,” said Jesperson. “We are here on behalf of a young lady who, while paying a visit to one of the graves—Rather than go into the whole story, let me simply say that she lost an item and believes that a man she encountered may be of help.”
Mr. Bailey did not look entirely convinced by this flimsy concoction, and I wished we had spent more effort in creating a plausible excuse for our questions. “An hitem? What sort of an hitem? If anything was lost here, I’d be the one to find it, you may be certain. I go over the grounds every—”
“We’d like to speak to this gentleman,” Jesperson said, abandoning his story and opening the drawing book. “Do you recognize him?”
It was immediately clear that Mr. Bailey did. “Why, I should say I do! Although I don’t suppose Mr. Smurl would be gratified by the likeness—quite sinister, he looks there, and I’m sure I’ve never seen him with such an expression in life!” Then he frowned and looked at us suspiciously. “’Ere! Your friend wasn’t meaning to imply Mr. Smurl might have taken her ‘hitem’?”
“Certainly not,” Jesperson said quickly. “I hope you did not mistake me—I meant to cast no aspersions—but if we could find him … she would be most grateful, and we, on her behalf …”
Unexpectedly, the caretaker chuckled. His suspicions had vanished, and he seemed genuinely amused. “The young lady would like to see Mr. Smurl again, I suppose! Yes, I should not be surprised! And did she drop her ’ankerchief in his path, to tempt him? Ooh la la! I have seen it all before, too many times …” He shook his head, and then composed his face into seriousness. “You had better tell your young friend that Mr. Smurl is a ’appily married man.”
Jesperson frowned and shook his head. “From the picture, he does not strike me as a ladies’ man. Is Mr. Smurl a frequent visitor to the cemetery?”
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