“Yes, sir,” I said solemnly. “I promise not to Investigate Mr. Leighton’s or Miss Carmichael’s murders.”
“Er—” Father looked taken aback to have won so easily, so I added a proviso.
“As long as you promise to keep us informed on any developments in the case. Either case.” I glared at him, fiercely, out of Mum’s eyes, until he conceded.
“Yes. Quite. Er—very good. Let’s go inside and see what Cook’s done for tea, shall we? It’s freezing out here.”
And he led me out of the carriage house and closed the door on our sad memories—not at all suspicious that I was still plotting how to keep the case open.
I took Nora and David’s letter, along with Rufus, to my room, and sat in the fading daylight by the window for a long time, trying to decide what to do. There was little danger in deciphering it—but what if it contained secrets with a direct bearing on the case? I would have to turn it over to Father. I chewed my thumb, debating. I didn’t think he would sack Miss Judson over something like that. But I couldn’t take the chance.
I set the letter aside and tried to focus on anything else. But the stillness in the house was unbearable, and Peony kept pulling the note from where I’d tucked it, chewing its corner. She would eat the evidence before I had a chance to interpret it, and then where would the case be? What if this long-buried letter held the single most important clue to cracking the mystery of Olive’s disappearance, or the murders? I couldn’t just pretend it didn’t exist.
“Mrow.” Peony’s conviction was catching.
I eyed her sideways. “It’s probably nothing.”
“No.”
“You’re incorrigible,” I said. “We just promised Father we wouldn’t Investigate the murders.”
“No.” She reached for the note again.
“Oh, I see.” Although I really didn’t. It just made me feel better, talking to Peony, judgmental as she could be. “It’s probably just another newsy letter from Mum’s friends. It might not have anything to do with the murders.” In fact, how could it? It was sent decades before anyone even thought about killing Mr. Leighton. Peony sat watching me, big green eyes patient. “But it might have something to do with Olive’s disappearance. And that’s a completely different case.” I hadn’t promised Father I wouldn’t Investigate something that happened twenty years ago, after all.
Peony gave a warble of complete exasperation and wandered off, but she might have been muttering something about Loopholes and Legal Technicalities.
Feeling only a little guilty, I retired to the schoolroom, which had the best lighting for this sort of task, and set up facing the door, with a big stack of books concealing what I was really working on. I unfolded the letter from Egypt and, notebook at the ready, set about attempting to decode and transcribe it.
It was slow going, as the two sets of handwriting were similar enough, and messy enough, that it was a challenge to figure out what each blob of ink belonged to—the first letter, going crosswise? Or the second, going lengthwise?—let alone what word it was supposed to be. After an unsuccessful attempt to read it sensibly, I started at the end, and found signatures. They would have been just as mystifying, if I hadn’t been already familiar with Hadrian’s Guard and their Classical nicknames. This one was signed Cleopatra and Ptolemy: Egyptian brother and sister, Nora and David Carmichael.
Nora had written first, so her note was harder to decipher, buried beneath David’s untidy scrawl. I pulled my lamp closer, and with the aid of my magnifying lens, painstakingly pieced the note together—or most of it, anyway.
It was from 1875, just a few months after Olive’s disappearance, and it wasn’t at all what I expected.
Columba, he wrote,
Tell me you’ve heard from her. I am mad with worry. She never showed up—I now realize you must have helped her make a different (illegible due to handwriting, age, or Peony). You were her dearest friend. She confided in you. She trusted you. I know you would have helped her, if you could. If you won’t tell me where she is, at least tell her to get in touch with me. Not here. She knows where. It will reach me. Nora says to give up on her, she betrayed us all. But I never will. I never will. Tell her I still love her. —Ptolemy
Beside his signature was a sketch of an eagle perched on a branch.
Nora’s note, by contrast, was gay and carefree—lighthearted chatter about the wonders of Egypt, how she couldn’t believe she’d made it at last. Her final comment was that she “had little Olive to thank for it,” whatever that meant. Send her my love; I gave her a leaving token when last we met. Her message ended with an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.
I sat back, stiff-necked and half blind from squinting at Carmichael hieroglyphics. And stunned.
Mum had helped Olive escape.
* and you thought that reference was hypothetical, Dear Reader!
† I could admire the creatures from afar perfectly well; scientific appreciation did not require them to scurry out of nowhere into my boots or hair.
15
Mum’s the Word
“Mumming” is a Christmas tradition curiously apt to inspire unsocial behavior among those with criminal proclivities. The custom of parading about in costume, performing comical sketches, descends into violence with alarming regularity. Our colony in Newfoundland reports that before the practice was banned in the 1860s, mummers there were involved in some twenty-five legal proceedings, including sixteen trials, nine charges of assault and battery, and at least one murder. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide
Miss Judson finally reappeared, looking not at all as if she’d spent the evening in a pique, a sulk, or a Mood. She poked her head into the schoolroom, bearing a stack of mail, rosy-cheeked and fresh-faced as if she’d merely been out enjoying an Invigorating Evening Constitutional.* It took all my Exceptional Forbearance not to scold her for quarreling with Father.
“Look—Christmas cards from Clive and Maud!” She handed them to me, and for a happy moment we were lost in news from friends we’d met on holiday last fall. “And I ran into Priscilla as I was fetching the post. She can confirm Genie’s alibi—she was indeed at the midnight concert, plying everyone present for interviews about Olive.”
“Anything else?”
“Only that—and I quote—‘the second performance was frightfully boring,’ compared to the first. And everyone seems to think the chairs were arranged as a sort of memorial tribute.” The skepticism in her voice said how much credence she afforded that theory. “What have you been up to?” Her eyes skirted the worktable, and I was sorely tempted to bend over the letter in a fruitless effort to shield it from view.
Instead, I fell on my own sword.† I slipped from the stool and faced her. “I’ve promised Father that we’ll stop Investigating Mr. Leighton’s and Miss Carmichael’s murders.” I’d found what I wanted to know, hadn’t I? How Mum had been involved? That should be enough. It would have to be.
Miss Judson blinked, exited, went several telegraph-tapping steps down the hallway—heels clicking even on the thick rug—then returned, eyes narrow. “I’m sorry. I seem to have lost my way. I was looking for Myrtle Hardcastle’s schoolroom.”
I was in no mood for her jokes. “I said, I’ve promised Father we wouldn’t Investigate the murders.”
“Ah. Then I suppose you won’t want to see this.” She held out the parcel so the label faced me: addressed to Stephen Hardcastle, with Stephen crossed out and replaced with Myrtle in blotchy, unfamiliar handwriting.
“From the Blakeneys?” My hands folded over the letter I’d been transcribing. “What do you suppose it is?”
She set the parcel between us on the workbench. “At a guess, materials pertaining to the case.” She nodded at my recent work. “What’s that?”
“An old letter of Mum’s. Not from Olive—from the Carmichaels.” I handed over both letter and transcription.
Her cool eyes swiftly ran down the page. �
��Good work,” she said absently. Then her face relaxed into a smile. “I knew it—your mum was a romantic, helping two young lovers spirit themselves away.”
“Except they didn’t,” I pointed out. “Or else why was David so upset?”
“Hmm. It’s a pity he didn’t think to include more details of the plan—how, exactly, the escape was accomplished, for instance.”
“Or why,” I said—entirely against my will. The case was over. I’d cleared Mum’s name. Or the Carmichaels had.
Miss Judson allowed me a moment, during which I pretended I was no longer interested in anything to do with Olive Blackwell or Schofield College or Professor Leighton or Miss Carmichael. I carefully folded up the letter and tucked it into a drawer, safely away from Peony, then closed the books I’d been using as a shield and returned them to their shelves. There. Now this was just an ordinary English schoolroom again.
“The Blakeneys will be sorry to hear it. They seemed to be counting on our help.” She put a thoughtful hand atop the parcel. “Your father must be a persuasive litigator, to have convinced you to make such a choice.”
It wasn’t him, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
“I see your vow did not preclude you from deciphering that letter.”
“That’s Olive’s disappearance,” I said to the tabletop. “Not the murders.” With Miss Judson and Peony both staring down at me, it was hard to keep my composure. I had to learn how they did that! They could break a witness without saying a word.
“Duly noted. A significant distinction, indeed. I suppose I’ll have to mark this ‘return to sender,’ and ship it all back.”
She was ruthless. I felt myself reaching for the box before I could think better of it. I gave her my best glower and snatched it from her hands.
“Maybe it’s a Christmas present.”
Some present, indeed. I peeled open the package, and found a collection of newspaper clippings wrapped in a note: A peace offering from Genie, from her work on the Olive Blackwell case. In addition to the clippings, there were handwritten notes, maps, and lists, along with some ephemera from the college: a cartoon from Punch, old programs, and song sheets.
“She told us the original things were missing,” I said.
Miss Judson regarded the hoard like it was a box of bonbons and she was trying to select the choicest morsel. Finally she plucked out a handful. “She must have found additional copies somewhere. It looks like she’s been collecting materials for years.”
Headlines announced, Leighton Resigns Under Cloud of Suspicion and Leighton Leaves in Shame. The Schofield Daily bade Farewell to Professor Leighton with only the most neutral coverage of his academic achievements, a picture of the Saturnalia Chalice, and lukewarm good wishes. The longest article was an exposé from the Upton Register, the newspaper of Swinburne’s larger neighbor. Accompanying this were a drawing that made Olive look sweet and innocent and a sketch of blindfolded figures in togas assembled like ghosts around a single flaming candle.
Miss Judson proceeded to read the article aloud.
Girl Student at College Falls to Her Death
Or Does She? What Happened to Olive Blackwell?
18 December 1874. Last night witnessed one of the most shocking and mystifying events in local memory. The scene was the Campanile belltower at Schofield College in nearby Swinburne, which is notorious across England for admitting female students. Sunday night, according to Witnesses and Police (see Constable Gerald Hardy, pictured), several students had assembled at the Campanile for a pagan ritual of sorts, an initiation to a so-called secret society. The students have had their names withheld for the protection of their families (mostly local Swinburnians of some repute, whom this newspaper does not wish to malign), but for the missing girl, one Miss Olive Blackwell, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Reverend Vernon Blackwell, professor of Divinity at Schofield College.
Miss Blackwell, witnesses claim, had gathered with friends in the Campanile’s belfry. Shortly before midnight, through disastrous misadventure, Miss Blackwell somehow fell from the open archway and vanished. Despite a thorough search mounted by College officials and the Swinburne Constabulary, no trace of the girl has been found.
Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts—or fate—of Miss Blackwell is urged to come forward. The Blackwell family have offered a reward of £100 for any information leading to her safe return.<
I tucked my feet under my knees and studied the picture of the figures in their robes and blindfolds. Now that I was no longer concerned about Mum’s guilt, I found the scene thrilling, maybe even a bit romantic. Well, until the bit where it caused a scandal.
“Why did they do it?” I said. “Why did Olive want to disappear? And where did she go? Why didn’t she ever write to David?” Somehow, knowing she’d really fled, and not simply been murdered, it seemed sadder than ever.
Miss Judson was pondering the article. “A hundred pounds is a lot of money,” she mused. “But five people decided their secret was even more valuable. Or at least one of them did.” She picked up another of Genie’s notes, where she’d written down six names and a notation:
Olive Blackwell
Jemima Bell
Nora Carmichael
David Carmichael
Henry Spence-Hastings
Vikram Munjal
(Six centuriae per cohort = 6 HG members)
“That’s why there’s six!” I exclaimed. A Roman legion was divided into units called cohorts, which in turn were made up of six groups of one hundred soldiers, centurions like our little lead figure.
“Yes, very historical of them,” Miss Judson said. “Top marks.”
“Do you think they were all in on it?” Genie had listed the same people from the Cornwall expedition—the ones I’d come up with, too. “But Olive never told David where she was going. Or wait—she did.” I indicated my transcription of his note. “But something went wrong.”
“It brings us back to her reasons for disappearing. What could have provoked such drastic measures?”
“They all went on that archæological dig together. Maybe Olive absconded with some treasure.”
“As we well know, that sort of thing is not easily kept secret,” she said, referring to one of our previous Investigations. “And why would they conspire to protect a friend who was a thief?”
“Maybe it made them all look bad. Those threatening Latin messages all mentioned a tribunal for corruption and abuses of power.”
She eyed me sternly. “This brings us perilously close to breaking your recent vow of obedience.”
I growled—and forged ahead anyway. “We know that the killer—that someone accused Professor Leighton of corrupting youth. Which youth? Corrupted how?” I partially answered my own question. “Hadrian’s Guard.”
“Mmm. When people talk about corruption, they’re usually referring to things like bribery, extortion, and embezzlement.”
“People getting rich through ill-gotten gains.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” she said.
“But it does,” I said. “Nora told us all about it. We know exactly how the members of Hadrian’s Guard all got so rich and powerful.” I found the article, and jammed my finger down upon the image, the very thing we’d all been admiring last night. “The Saturnalia Chalice.”
Miss Judson produced her own drawings of the artifact. “Aside from the—questionable decorations, it doesn’t look especially suspicious.”
I scowled at it. “Miss Blackwell’s father taught Divinity—that’s religion, right? Maybe she was offended by the carvings?”
The missionaries’ daughter let out a clap of laughter. “That hardly seems reason enough to ruin someone’s career. Let alone kill him. Or vanish into thin air without ever telling your friends or family what became of you.”
I dismissed my own theory. “And why would the college care about that? It must be something else. Ill-gotten gains. Ma
ybe they stole it from the real owners.”
“I doubt the Romans are going to press charges.”
We both fell silent, returning to the sheaf of clippings. “Oh, this is interesting,” she said, a few moments later. “The dates—Olive disappeared on December the seventeenth.”
I was reading the caption accompanying the picture of the chalice, and recognized the date’s significance immediately. “The beginning of Saturnalia!”
Miss Judson and I regarded each other evenly. “It could be a coincidence.”
“No,” opined Peony, amid a yawn.
I picked up the drawing of the chalice again. “Nora Carmichael credited this with her success.”
“And the Mayor’s,” Miss Judson reminded me.
“And Professor Leighton’s downfall?”
She didn’t answer that.
Monday morning, Father headed to work without stopping for breakfast, which meant his disagreement with Miss Judson was not yet resolved, despite my promise to leave his case alone. I’d lain awake for hours, pondering the Saturnalia Chalice, willing it to reveal its deepest, darkest, deadliest secret. Vow to Father or no, I was sure now that the Chalice was somehow at the heart of everything, both Olive’s disappearance and the recent murders.
But how to untangle them? And without crossing from one case—the older one, which I had (more or less) parental sanction to Investigate—into the new one, the murders, which I assuredly had not? I’d stared at the photograph of the expedition to Cornwall, counting the dead and gone. Olive—gone. Mum, dead. David and Nora, dead. Professor Leighton, dead. Only the Mayor was left.
He’d been acting suspiciously from the beginning. There was his late-night secret meeting with Dr. Munjal after Mr. Leighton’s death (well, evening meeting, eavesdropped on by Nanette Munjal). The ongoing argument with the Leightons, and Mrs. Leighton turning him away from the shop before her husband was murdered. And his clandestine meeting with Nora Carmichael at the museum—right before she turned up dead outside his front door. Even Father would have to find all of that significant. Not that I could tell him any of it.
Cold-Blooded Myrtle Page 14