The Case of the Left-Handed Lady: An Enola Holmes Mystery Page 6

  The content was not at all what one might expect from a baronet’s daughter. I found nothing about Sunday phaeton rides in Hyde Park, holidays at the seaside, shopping along Regent Street, the latest fashions in millinery, or even a mention of a new dress. Nor did I find any accounts of her diversions with her friends. Instead, the entries were mostly troubled musings:. . . a great deal of talk about the Poor Law, the “deserving poor” versus those who are undeserving. Unfortunates who have been blinded, crippled, et cetera through no fault of their own are regarded as worthy of charitable aid, but all of those who are physically able, Daddy says, must be morally deficient, lazy, and undeserving of consideration; the beggars should continue to be whipped out of town as has been the custom, or else go to the workhouse. But if work is such a great good, why, then, does the workhouse punish its inmates with dinners of thin gruel after their long hours of the hardest possible labour?

  . . . social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest would hold that there is no such category as “deserving” poor. Those who have showed themselves unable to support themselves should be let alone as Nature takes its course, eliminating them, making way for a superior human race. Of which we of the titled classes, I suppose, are examples? Because we can quote Shakespeare, play Chopin upon the piano, and keep our gloves clean while taking tea?

  What of the babies? For the most part, the poverty-stricken people who are succumbing to Darwin’s selective process have already reproduced. By this way of thinking, should the babies also be abandoned to perish?

  . . . the Great Unwashed of the East End are not themselves intellectually capable of organising unions and marches, Daddy declares; some outside influence, very likely foreign and enemy, must be to blame for the disturbances, and the police are fully justified in bloodying heads in order to put a halt to any further and more serious uprisings. He does not deny that the mill-workers live in fever-nests unfit for pigs and toil until they fall down, like galley-slaves under the whips of heartless foremen – but he does not seem to feel that they deserve any better. He does not seem to feel that they are people like us at all. It is so difficult for me to sit and fold my hands in my lap, smile sweetly and listen . . .

  After reading this and much more, I still considered myself a fraud, for my weary brain, while sympathetic to Lady Cecily’s point of view, could make nothing practical of it.

  Slumber, I decided, was needful. Sleep would knit up the ravelled sleave of care, to quote some Shakespeare myself. Or, in this case, sleep would tidy my yarn-basket mind.

  Thus, without admitting that I was afraid, I excused myself from venturing forth in habit and black cowl that night. Instead, I went to bed.

  Awakening what seemed like a moment afterward, I found that it was morning.

  Somehow, while I had slept so soundly – unusual for me – the muddle in my mind had indeed sorted itself out a bit, so that a thread of reasoning presented itself to me, thus:

  I had come to London; I had seen London’s poor; I had felt impelled to help them.

  Lady Cecily, by the evidence of her charcoal drawings, also had seen. I did not yet know how this highly irregular encounter had come to pass, nor did I know whether it had happened before or after her questioning journal entries, but somehow (and I must find out how) the young lady had walked amongst London’s poor.

  Had she also felt impelled to help them?

  Had she perhaps left home of her own free will?

  Settling into my office to “work” as Ivy Meshle, I read the morning newspapers. Finding no communication from Mum, I tossed the news of the day into the fire, then rang for tea.

  Meanwhile, in a contemplative frame of mind, I got out Lady Cecily’s photographic portrait and a sheaf of foolscap paper. Referring to the portrait, I pencilled a quick likeness of the lady. Then, putting the photograph away, I drew her head in profile, recalling other photographs I had seen of her, combining those memories with my observations of her mother and brothers and sisters, all of whom so strongly resembled one another. Over and over again I sketched Lady Cecily, with no aristocratic finery, just her face, from various angles until I began to feel that I had met her in person.

  Deep in my work, I had not noticed Joddy entering the office with my tea. Unaware of the boy’s presence, I jumped when his piping voice spoke from behind my shoulder: “I didn’t know you could draw like that!”

  It was not his place to comment, but luckily it took me a startled moment to catch my breath before I told him so. And in that moment he spoke again. “I know ’er,” he declared, setting down the tea-tray, then pointing at my portraits of Lady Cecily with his stubby white-gloved forefinger.

  Ridiculous. He could not possibly –

  Wait a minute.

  “Indeed?” I tried not to show how interested I was, for like any servant he would draw himself into a shell if I questioned him too sharply. I kept my tone carefully neutral. “What is her name?”

  “I don’t know ’er like that. I’ve seen her someplace, is all.”

  “Where, pray tell?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I swivelled to observe him. There he stood with a faraway gaze, as if trying to recall a dream.

  “Was she in a carriage?”

  He shook his head slowly, looking puzzled, before he remembered his manners. “No, my – no, Miss Meshle. She were standing on a corner, like.”

  “Where? Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, Seven Dials?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well then, doing what? Shopping?”

  “No, I don’t think so . . .” Uncertain.

  My patience beginning to wear thin, I grumbled, “Selling matches?” A ridiculous notion, for only beggars sold matches.

  But, looking mildly startled, Joddy murmured, “Matches. Strike.”

  Bean-headed boy, of course one struck a match in order to light it. Restraining myself from rolling my eyes, and trying to keep my impatience out of my tone, I tried another question. “What was she wearing?”

  Of course he did not answer what I had asked. “She ’ad somethin’ in a basket,” he said.

  As did half the populace of London, I thought, and the other half had something in a barrow. Common folk lived penny-in-hand to pastry-in-mouth, most of them, lacking icebox to keep food or stove to prepare dinner, eating sooty messes they bought from street vendors, the poor living off the poor. “Something in a basket? What?” I asked, utterly surprised and a bit sarcastic, for surely the flea-brained boy had to be mistaken. “Roly-poly puddings?”

  “No, Miss Meshle, nothin’ like that. I think it were papers.”

  “You think you saw this girl selling newspapers?”

  I should have kept my mouth closed, or at the very least, my tone under better control.

  “No, my – um, no, Miss Meshle.” Frightened into stupidity, Joddy would be of no further use.

  Indeed, after a few more attempts, I found that there was nothing more to be got out of him. “That will do. Thank you, Joddy.”

  After he had left, I muttered several naughty things in a low tone, then dismissed the episode from my mind. The frustrating, addlepated boy had probably seen some other pretty girl.

  Sipping my tea and, I admit, admiring my own artwork for a few minutes before I burned it in the fire, I continued to mull over the matter of the missing Lady Cecily.

  I discarded the absurd notion that she had eloped, for reasons already mentioned, and also because she would hardly have gone off in her nightgown! Rather, in preparation for such a romantic escapade, she would have been waiting in her most fetching frock.

  But supposing her escapade, rather than being romantic, had involved any of the poorer neighborhoods of London – well, the essence remained the same: She would not have gone in a nightgown. Had she perhaps secreted some more humble apparel for herself, and hidden the nightgown to make it appear –

  What? That she had been snatched from her bed by a kidnapper?

  And forcibly carr
ied down a ladder? Nonsense. Impossible, in my experience of ladders.

  Had the ladder been placed at her window as a blind?

  If she had gone away on her own, how had she travelled? Had anyone assisted her?

  I had too many questions and not enough answers.

  Presently I rang the bell again.

  “Joddy,” I told the boy-in-buttons when he appeared, “go fetch me a cab.”

  Miss Meshle was going shopping.

  But not in any of the establishments I normally frequented. I had the cab, which cost sixpence a mile, drop me at the nearest railway station – much less expensive, as I had to travel some small distance, to a northern part of London where I particularly wanted to visit a certain commercial establishment: Ebenezer Finch & Son Emporium.

  Exiting the train at St. Pancras Station – a frothy architectural confection if I ever saw one – I walked a few blocks. As Ivy Meshle, an ordinary office worker whose skirt, while decently concealing her ankles, did not trail in the dirt, I attracted leers instead of glares. This time the top-hatted gentlemen took no notice of me at all, and no one suggested it would be my own fault if I came to harm – but male clerks ogled from shop doorways, and a working-class loiterer spoke to me: “ ’Ow do you do, sweet’eart ? What’s yer ’urry? Stop an’ chat a bit.”

  Pretending I had not heard, without so much as a glance I strode past him. Thank goodness he did not follow, as had been known to happen. Indeed, a slop-girl walking in the slums enjoyed more peace than any decent female on city streets. I found it necessary to ignore several other male pests before I finally spied my destination.

  Approaching Ebenezer Finch & Son Emporium, I felt my eyes widen, for never had I seen such capacious bow windows flanking the door of a shop, or so many polished brass dress forms upon which were displayed the latest strait-belted fashions. In, I might add, the most startling of chemically derived colours.

  Walking inside provided even more of a shock to my sensibilities. One must understand that shopping as I knew it consisted of entering a stationer’s dark little establishment, or an apothecary’s, or a draper’s, for instance, and telling the fusty blacksuited man behind the counter what of his particular merchandise one wanted, upon which he would either bring an item forth from storage or else take down an order. Shopping was logical and dull. But this Ebenezer Finch & Son Emporium, brilliantly gas-lit even in the daytime, was so far from dull that it arrested the logical workings of the mind. Its merchandise flaunted, attracted, distracted, dazed. On the panelled walls and the varnished wooden counter-tops and even hanging from the ceiling were displayed an astounding variety of wares: bolts of fabric and trimming; hats, gloves, and shawls; tools and padlocks; wooden toys and tin soldiers; kitchen cutlery of all sorts; buckets and watering-cans; caps and aprons and wrought-iron coat hooks, china figurines, fancy-ware, flowers and ribbons, swags of lace and chiffon – it was as if I had stepped into an ocular whirlpool.

  At first, saturated with colour, sheen, and flutter, I could scarcely make sense of my surroundings. It was as if everywhere I looked, something shiny attempted to steal away my vital principle like a Mesmerist’s watch winking on its chain. But exerting an effort of will to sort out the spectacle before me, I began to notice that different categories of items were stored and displayed in different areas attended by different clerks – many of them female clerks, I saw with relief – behind counters that seemed to stretch for a mile. The shop was necessarily quite large, scarcely to be called a shop at all; indeed, this was my first experience of what came to be known as a “department” store.

  I wondered what constant exposure to this place might do to those who worked here. Hatters went mad and painters became poisoned; labourers in cotton mills grew stunted if they did not sicken and die; this “emporium” also seemed somehow unhealthful to me. How might such a plethora of pretty things affect, if not the body, then the mind?

  In a prominent position just inside the door was displayed a photographic portrait of the proprietor, Ebenezer Finch, & Son. Once I had managed to rein in my runaway thoughts, I studied this likeness with interest, not so much in Ebenezer Finch as in Son.

  Alexander Finch.

  Shopkeeper’s son of impudent fame, alleged seducer of Lady Cecily Alistair.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  WITHIN THE ORNATELY FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH he appeared ordinary enough – indeed, so nondescript as to give one the impression that one had seen him somewhere before. An effect no doubt produced by the blankness of expression that is required in order to hold a pose for a camera.

  Wandering further into the kaleidoscopic depths of the shop, I looked about me, ostensibly for something to buy, but actually for Mr. Alexander Finch.

  I wanted to assess him. To arrive at some conclusion concerning his character. To guess at the degree of his involvement, if any, in Lady Cecily’s disappearance.

  As luck would have it, I found him almost immediately, for a loud, hectoring voice caught my attention. “Alexander, a monkey could dress them windows better!”

  Looking towards the source of this ungrammatical statement, I located an office – rather an octopus affair, with pneumatic payment-and-receipt tubes running into it from all areas of the store – evidently the proprietor’s office, elevated in the emporium’s farthest corner. Through its large windows, presumably meant for keeping an eye on commerce, I could see Ebenezer Finch haranguing his son.

  “. . . sort of colours one would expect from a screaming anarchist,” the father was blustering as he stabbed an accusing finger at his son. “Get them changed to something more tasteful straightaway.”

  “Yes, sir.” Standing with his hands folded in front of him, the younger Finch showed not the least emotion, not even a trace of angry red in his face.

  “But you’re not to set foot an inch beyond the doorstep, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Expedite the matter, and tell me when you’re done.”

  Dismissed, Mr. Alexander Finch gave a nod and exited the office.

  By taking a few quick strides, I contrived to encounter him at the bottom of the brass-railed stairs leading down to the main floor of the store. Rather breathlessly I addressed him, “Excuse me, Mr. Finch . . .”

  “May I help you, miss?” Halting to face me, he seemed pleasant and obliging enough. A bit dandified, perhaps. He wore tinted eyeglasses indoors. And instead of the usual sober garb of a clerk, he had on a peacock-blue ascot with a horseshoe pin, a silver-grey waistcoat with white buttons, and very smart cuff-links; indeed, his was the male equivalent of the fashionable but inexpensive clothing that ornamented Miss Meshle. If he were a seducer, perhaps he would show some interest in me –

  Nonsense. Any comparison to me was hardly fair to Lady Cecily, who was not giraffe-like in personage.

  I told Alexander Finch, “Sir, I find myself quite bewildered by such a palatial establishment graced by such a variety of wares, and I wonder whether you might show me . . .” Then I let my voice sink to a murmur only he could hear. “Lady Theodora Alistair sent me to speak with you.”

  My heart quickened as I watched to see how he would react.

  But he barely reacted at all, showing only the faintest flicker of surprise, from which he recovered quickly, falling in with my charade. “If you’ll just walk this way, miss, I’ll be pleased to assist you.”

  He led me back through the store, past a counter where an attractive female clerk stood behind absurdly disembodied carved wooden hands displaying gloves, past another where a spinsterish woman exhibited cast-iron hearth sets to husband and wife; past several more, until he reached one where a willowy young working girl stood. To her he said, “Disappear.”

  Although his tone was low and neutral, she fled wide-eyed without a smile or a word – in fear? But perhaps such was her usual manner with him. She was, after all, a doe-eyed young thing, and he was the master’s son.

  Himself slipping behind the now-vacant counter, Mr. Alexander
Finch told me, “Here we have the very latest fashions in ladies’ footwear.”

  It would have attracted attention, you see, appearing disreputable, had I simply stood and talked with him. But we could converse over a counter-top, and to any onlooker it would seem that he was strictly attending to business, waiting upon me.

  I wasted no time. “Lady Theodora is taking matters into her own hands,” I explained, or fictionalised, “to see what the fair sex, in an unofficial way, can accomplish in searching for the missing Lady Cecily.”

  “Quite so. Something for spring, you say?” Pulling open some of the many deep drawers beneath and behind the counter, he brought forth a fawn-coloured boot with a delicate heel, a pearl-grey one that buttoned up the front instead of the side, and a tan one with laces.

  The boots were of excellent quality and quite lovely, but I only pretended to look at them as I told him, “No doubt you think it foolish, but Lady Theodora feels we must try. You see, the police have been of no help.”

  “I’d say not. All they do is watch me, and my father’s so vexed with me, he won’t let me out the door.”

  He said this just as imperturbably as he’d said anything else. So far I had gained no sense of him, none at all, whether for good or for ill.

  “Do you live at home with your parents?” I asked for lack of any better question.

  “No, I stay with the other clerks.”

  No doubt in a dormitory above the store.

  “Well, you’ve some respite from your father’s vexation, then. Why is he angry with you?”

  “Because I forget my place, as he calls it, treating people all much the same.” He gestured towards a bentwood chair placed on my side of the counter. “Would you care to have a seat, my lady?”