The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline Read online

  Directing her attention back to the black-inked, brutal missive, I shouted into her ear-trumpet, “What are you supposed to deliver? What message? To whom?”

  “I dunno!” Seating herself again, she hugged herself with her skinny arms. “I’ve thought an’ thought an’ I just dunno! What with losing the baby an’ all, I might’ve forgot.”

  An odd, almost seasick, upside-down feeling took hold of me and rendered me speechless. I simply could not imagine . . . my dear old landlady, she who now spent her days stewing oxtails and tatting pillow-slips, had once traveled to a barbaric land, lost her husband, and then, “not in the best of ’ealth” . . .

  Mrs. Tupper must have seen myriad shocked questions in my face.

  “Stillborn it were,” she explained, “an’ no wonder, fer I were more’n half starved, my clothes in rags an’ no bed to lie on in them caves, an’ no sleep to be ’ad, either, for the rats would nibble yer fingers.” With her arms still clasped around herself, she rocked her hunched upper body to and fro. “A ’ellish place it was. Folk went mad. One of ’em took my baby an’ flung it into the sea. I thought fer sure I would perish, too, an’ that grieved I were, I didn’t greatly care.”

  I whispered, “How ever did you escape?”

  And there was no need for me to shout in her ear-trumpet, for she understood my question well enough, from my face if not from my lips.

  “The English nurse lady it were,” she said. “Funny, I hain’t thought of ’er in years. Yet she were famous at the time; the soldiers, they called her the Lady with the Lamp. ’Undreds of them she nursed every day like a mother. ’Ow or why she found time to take mercy on me is a miracle.” Mrs. Tupper’s watery gaze seemed to see not me, but a distant place of the past. “Maybe she ’eard I wouldn’t . . .” My landlady’s papery old face actually flushed pink. “I wouldn’t, if you know what I mean, like them camp-followers. . . . Most of the women in the cellars would do anything for the sake of food an’ pennies, an’ I don’t blame ’em, but I just couldn’t bring meself . . . Maybe that were it. ’Owever it come about, one day one of them crippled boys she adopted fetched me to ’er. Up in a corner tower she were, an’ me with barely strength to climb the stairs. There must’ve been a ’undred people in that room, jabbering all French an’ whatnot, coming an’ going with sponge baths an’ bandage lint an’ shirt buttons an’ lemons an’ tincture of iodine an’ knitted Cardigans an’ Balaclavas an’ who knows what all; she ’ad ’er own storehouse in there.”

  “What was her name?” I murmured, trying to remember—for I, also, had heard of this remarkable Englishwoman, although I must admit that my knowledge of the Crimean War was sorely lacking; my education, dependent upon my father’s library, had focussed on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the like.

  “She saw to it that I were washed an’ fed,” marveled Mrs. Tupper, “an’ fine clothes she give me, better’n what I was married in, an’ she arranged my passage ’ome an’ paid for it out of ’er own purse. An’ that gracious she were, chatting to me—though I barely understood a word she said. Deaf I was even back then, but I never said nothin’, for I ’oped it would go away, bein’ just from the gunfire there at Sevastopol, ye see, when Mr. Tupper an’ me were taking brandy to the troops while the Russian ladies set up on top of the ’ill with their parasols an’ their picnic baskets, watching like it were a music ’all show.”

  Good heavens. She had been in battle, too? My little old landlady?

  Hardly knowing what to think or how to continue this rambling interview, I once more lifted the mysterious missive that had come in her post and showed it to her. “Mrs. Tupper,” I implored, “do you have any idea—”

  She shook her toothless head vehemently. “I just don’t know!” she cried. “It don’t make no sense. I were nobody over there!”

  A very brave nobody, I thought. But still, a mere accidental woman caught in the war. So who on earth was her mysterious enemy, and what did he—for unmistakably the ferocious handwriting was that of a man—what did he want of her? Now, thirty-four years afterward?

  Although my curiosity might never be satisfied, still, I felt it my duty to help her with this mysterious matter.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  SO, AS EVERY VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY SHOULD DO, I sought the advice of an older, wiser, masculine head, consulting a man of the world: Dr. Leslie Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian—my employer.

  I jest. Dr. Ragostin was fictitious, my invention so that I should have the opportunity to search for missing things and persons. All the next day, at work as Miss Meshle, the great man’s secretary, I puzzled over Mrs. Tupper’s problem: how to deal with the sender of her mysteriously threatening letter?

  As was my custom, I first sat at my desk and composed a list of questions:

  Why “carrier pigeon”? Because she

  was going home? Are a carrier pigeon

  and a homing pigeon the same? To call

  a person a pigeon is a very odd term of

  insult.

  The Americans say “stool pigeon” of an

  informer. Is, call him X, an

  American?

  “Bird-brained” rather than “harebrained”

  also an Americanism?

  What message?

  From whom?

  To whom?

  How does it concern X? Does he wish

  to receive it, intercept it, destroy it?

  How has he fixed on Mrs. Tupper?

  Was he in Scutari with her?

  Unhelpful, overall. I did not really feel that the threatening letter had come from an American. In no way was America concerned in the Crimea; moreover, there was something quite European about X’s hedgehog handwriting, including the ink—

  I added to the list,

  Why India ink? Meant for

  pen- and-ink sketches; is X an artist?

  Then I sat scowling at the list without another worthwhile thought until Joddy, the page-boy, came in with the morning’s newspapers and, since it was May, a bouquet of lilacs I had requested for the sake of their heavenly scent.

  Nor did I achieve anything more that day than to compose, and bang out upon the very modern type-writing machine I had recently purchased, the following to be placed in the newspaper personal advertisements:

  Carrier pigeon has no message, knows of

  no message, can deliver nothing. Further

  inquiries pointless. Please desist. Mrs. T.

  “T” for Tupper; I did not know Mrs. Tupper’s first name.

  Relieved to find her in the kitchen that evening cooking one of her ghastly messes and none the worse for wear, I showed her this, receiving her permission to place it in the newspapers.

  The next day I typed numerous copies, took them around to all the dailies on Fleet Street, and hoped that would be the end of the matter.

  Would that it were so.

  That was a Wednesday. Carrier pigeon has no message was published in the Thursday morning editions. On Thursday evening, as I wended my way back to Mrs. Tupper’s ramshackle house crammed between the tenements of the East End, my thoughts were mainly of supper, hoping it would be something at least remotely palatable. I walked up the front steps expecting some aroma—whether of stewed herring, chicken livers, or some less disgusting variety of meat—but the moment I opened the door, all such thoughts fled my mind.

  I saw drawers hanging open, chairs overturned, shelves knocked down, crockery broken upon the plank floor.

  I smelled cigar smoke, and whale oil leaking from a smashed lamp, and the distressingly physical odour of fear.

  I heard the smothered sound of someone crying. “’Elp!” came a muffled feminine voice, sobbing. “Please ’elp me!” The sound scorched my heart, for what despicable sort of villain would distress or harm such a deaf old dear as Mrs. Tupper?

  And what else might he do?

  Could he be still on the premises?

  Snatching my dagger from my bodice—with its hilt disguised as a large,
hideous brooch, it nestled between my buttons, sheathed in my corset—with weapon in hand, I entered the ransacked house, looking sharply about me as I made my way towards—I could see her now, bound hand and foot, gagged by a dish-towel—

  Not Mrs. Tupper!

  “They ’it me!”

  Tied to a kitchen chair was a rawboned girl perhaps twelve years old, whose swaddled, wet, and reddened face I did not recognise at first as I cut the twine that secured her feet and hands. But as she herself tore the gag off, I realised that it was Florrie, Mrs. Tupper’s daily girl-of-all-work, whom I had seen only a few times, as she generally finished before I arrived home.

  Where was Mrs. Tupper?

  “They laid ’ands on me!” Florrie spewed forth such a torrent of woe that no sense could be got out of her, while I burned with fear that my landlady lay insensible, or hurt, or—or worse. But I saw no sign of her downstairs. Leaving Florrie to her hysterics, I rushed up to Mrs. Tupper’s bedchamber, dagger in hand. But I found only more ruins—bedstead flung aside and everything from the wardrobe and dresser thrown on the floor; not an inch of carpet was to be seen. Such were the heaps of sheets and blankets mixed with shoes, skirts, shawls, and unmentionables that at first I thought Mrs. Tupper might be lying somewhere underneath. Throwing my dagger aside, like a demented badger I burrowed amongst bed linens, penny weeklies, house-dresses, rheumatism cures, aprons and frocks and—and my landlady’s old black Sunday bonnet—

  Holding the venerable bonnet freshly trimmed with new ribbons for Easter, I felt sick yet calmer, more sane.

  I retrieved my dagger and sheathed it, reasoning that if there were brigands still in the house, they would have attacked me by now; also, Florrie would have fled the kitchen, whereas I could still hear her lamentations echoing up the stairs.

  Having failed to find Mrs. Tupper in her bedroom, I checked my own. Oddly, it had not been ransacked like the rest of the house. I looked into the wardrobe and under the bed. Mrs. Tupper—or what I dreaded to find, her mortal remains—my landlady was not there.

  I ran back downstairs. Florrie had moved only to stand up, but her wails were increasingly taking the shape of words. “Gennelmums, my ’ind foot!” Barely intelligible; I could catch a few words now and then. “Come bustin’ in ’ere . . . slappin’ a respegguble girl . . . ’ouse all sixes an’ sevens . . .”

  “Where is Mrs. Tupper?” I interrupted.

  “. . . rat-face curs fit fer the sewer . . .”

  I took her by the shoulders. With difficulty I restrained myself from shaking her. “Florrie. Where is Mrs. Tupper?”

  “. . . an’ ’er makin’ pudding dough wit’ ’er sleeves rolled up, nuttin’ on ’er ’ead but ’er ’ouse-cap . . .”

  I went ahead and shook the obtuse girl, shouting, “Where is Mrs. Tupper?”

  Jerking herself free of my hands, Florrie shouted back at me as if I were the dense one, “I been telling ye! They took ’er!”

  It required an excruciating hour for me to get the tale out of Florrie. She would not calm down for any coaxing, and eventually I had to say I would summon a constable. (I could not possibly do so, for I myself was a runaway, wanted by Scotland Yard as well as by my very formidable brothers—but the girl did not know that.) Florrie, like any proper East Ender, dreaded having anything to do with the police, so she sat down in a kitchen chair as I told her to, and tried to talk sensibly. “They was dressed like gents, or I wouldn’t ’ave let them in.”

  “How many?” I had put the kettle on the stove and was trying to find a cup that was not broken so that I could give her tea.

  “Two big bearded blokes.”

  “And what did they look like?”

  “They ’ad beards like Anarchists.”

  And very probably fake. As patiently as I could, I responded, “Aside from the beards. What colour was their hair, for instance?”

  She didn’t recall.

  “How tall?”

  She couldn’t really say. They had seemed huge.

  “How old do you think they might have been?”

  One seemed younger than the other, but not so a person would notice. And so on. The poor girl’s dim wits were thoroughly addled by her fright.

  Understandably so. As far as I could piece together, the two bearded strangers had knocked at the door, asked politely to speak with Mrs. Tupper, and once within the house had quite changed their tone, demanding to be given the message for the Bird.

  “What?”

  “They kep’ on saying she should give ’em what she ’ad for the Bird.”

  “A Mr. Byrd, perhaps?”

  “No mister, no missus, just ‘the Bird,’ wot they say. Bellering into ’er ear-trumpet they were, ‘We know you was a spy for the Bird!’”

  CARRIER PIGEON, the mysterious and threatening missive had addressed Mrs. Tupper before instructing her to deliver her BIRD-BRAINED message. She was a bird who was to report to a Bird, then?

  Bizarre as it seemed, a pattern did appear to emerge. Otherwise, I might not have believed the ignorant girl-of-all-work still breathlessly babbling:

  “‘Wot you got fer the Bird,’ they kep’ yelling at ’er, an’ when she toll ’em an’ toll ’em she din ’ave nothing, they smacked ’er—”

  The blackguards! How could they strike a poor old woman?

  “—an’ then they smacked me fer interferin’—” Florrie had tried to intervene? My feelings for the girl warmed immediately.

  “—and they tied me up an’ commenced ’unting fer it.”

  “But—for what?”

  “I dunno, miss, no more’n Mrs. Tupper did. That flummoxed she were, she cried.”

  “Villains,” I muttered, setting a cup of tea in front of the girl.

  “Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.”

  “There’s no sugar, I’m afraid. It’s all spilled.” I paced the ruined room, unable to sit down with her. “So did these dastardly men find what they were looking for?”

  The girl took a long sip of tea, which I could not begrudge her, then finally said, “’Ow wud I know, Miss Meshle?”

  Confound her! I wanted to snatch her tea away. Just because she had been tied up with her back to the door, so that she could not see, could she not have heard something? As calmly and civilly as I could I inquired, and she reported one of the villains saying they would “take the deaf old bat along an’ ’e could ask ’er ’imself.”

  Who on earth was “’e”?

  Evidently the thugs had not found “the message to the Bird.”

  Who in perdition were they?

  Was there anything more to be got out of Florrie? Forcing myself to sit down so as to cease towering over the unfortunate girl, I began my interrogation of her all over again, but with no satisfactory results, other than the additional information that the older kidnapper was missing some teeth. (From this I could conclude that he was not of the very best class in society.) When Florrie—ridiculous but popular name; one seemed to run across Florries everywhere—when the obtuse wench began to cry again, I knew it was time to desist.

  “Very well, Florrie.” I gave her a shilling. “Run on home, now, tell your mother all about it, and have her spread the word.” Indeed I could not have hushed Florrie’s mother, a washerwoman, had I tried; her Irish tongue served as a megaphone for the neighbourhood. “Please let it be known”—I held up a pound note to indicate fiduciary inducement— “that anyone who saw those men take Mrs. Tupper or who knows anything about it should come here and inform me at once.”

  Still sniffling, Florrie nodded, then scuttled out the door.

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  AND DIRECTLY AFTER FLORRIE, I WENT OUT likewise, still in my striped-and-ruffled poplin dress, my silly little hat and green glass ear-bobs and false curls, for Miss Meshle was a familiar sight on that street, and its other inhabitants would not hesitate to talk with me. Amongst them I hoped to find witnesses to Mrs. Tupper’s abduction.

  And so I did, in plenty, for a horse-drawn conveyance wa
s a rarity on that narrow stone-paved lane, and Mrs. Tupper’s unexpected visitors had arrived in a carriage, no less. Many of the neighbourhood loiterers had noticed it.

  The “blind” beggar on the corner divulged that the strangers had arrived in a shiny black brougham driven by a pursy, florid man, and the horse had been a bay.

  The corner chandler had seen a phaeton with the top up, a coat-of-arms on the door, with a nondescript narrow sort of driver and a black horse that “would’ve been good for a funeral.”

  His wife agreed that there was a picture of a white deer or unicorn or something on the vehicle’s door, but said it was a barouche with the top up, not a phaeton, and the horse was brown. The driver had been short and stocky, with a pronounced chin.

  The greengrocer had seen a black brougham with bright yellow wheels but no coat-of-arms, drawn by a chestnut horse and driven by a tall, puffy-faced man with a red nose, obviously a heavy drinker and very likely Irish.

  The pudding-vendor said that a rather shabby grey cab had waited in front of Mrs. Tupper’s house, the heavy, dark horse looked “more fit for a plough,” and that the driver had one single eyebrow “as thick as thatch” that ran like a roof clear over his nose.

  The “lady of the night” on our street, who would also be a “lady of the day” when opportunity offered, said that she had approached the driver while the carriage sat in front of Mrs. Tupper’s house, but had been rudely rebuffed. She said he looked much like any other man, two eyes, mouth, nose in the middle. She said the carriage was black with shiny red wheels, no crest, and the horse was roan.

  The street urchins said variously that the horse was black, brown, or red, that the conveyance was a four-wheeler cab, a carriage, or a coach, that the driver was short, tall, fat, thin, old, young; they agreed only that he was unfriendly, throwing no pennies but rather threatening them with his whip.