The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline Read online

  “Exactly.” She looked at me in a new way; recognition flew between us. “Now I have told you my secret; you must tell me yours. Why do you conceal your name, and why are you so afraid of Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

  I sincerely wished I could tell her the truth: Sherlock Holmes was my brother whom I adored, there was no one whose companionship I would rather have shared; the famous detective was—discounting my absent mum, Sherlock and Mycroft were all I had by way of family—yet their masculine ignorance caused them to feel that they must take me in charge and imprison me in a finishing school or some such den of feminine tortures. Therefore I dared not, could not, must not let them find me.

  This was what I wished I could tell the wise and gentle Florence Nightingale, but I knew it could not be so. I said only, “I am terrified that he might find out about me.” True enough, although meanwhile, quite desperately my mind cast about for some plausible lie. But at this crisis of all times my imagination deserted me; I could not begin to think what to say—

  Amazingly, Miss Nightingale supplied for me the story I needed. Very gently she said, “It seems to me that the degree of your concern for, ah, Mrs. Tupper, is perhaps a bit unusual if Mrs. Tupper is indeed merely your landlady?”

  Oh, good heavens. She thought I was an illegitimate daughter, protecting my (presumably) aristocratic father from the stigma of dalliance with—

  Mrs. Tupper. How absurd. Poor, deaf, penny-pinching Mrs. Tupper, my mother?

  Yet not so absurd, for truly, my sweet old landlady was more of a mum to me than my own mother—

  Mum, from whom I had not heard since the incident of the bizarre bouquets, months ago. For whom I dared not search lest I actually find her and learn her true feelings, or lack of any, for me . . . It was not even necessary for me to lie, for long-suppressed injury in that moment attacked my heart with pain so severe, it assaulted my eyes. To my astonishment I found myself crying. The tears running down my face served as my answer.

  Obviously a practical-minded person, Miss Nightingale responded by reaching into a night-stand drawer where apparently she kept a supply of neatly pressed, lace-edged handkerchiefs, for she handed me one. “Dear,” she offered when I had composed myself a bit, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes is reputed to be the soul of discretion.”

  But shaking my head, once more I rose to my feet, this time remembering to pick up the leather carrying-case I had brought with me. “You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”

  Very kindly she did so.

  Still in a most unmindful frame of mind, I made straight for the stairs.

  A grave mistake. I should have, instead, sought out the narrow back steps that the servants used, gone down through the hidden regions of the house, and exited by way of the kitchen and the garden. But my senses had quite forsaken me; like a fool I ran straight down the same way I had come up, through the music-room and the drawing-room to the wide, main stairway, which I began precipitously to descend—

  “But Miss Nightingale is currently engaged. Moreover, she never sees more than one person at a time,” someone below was saying.

  “She must make an exception in this case,” responded a thrilling, familiar voice.

  Nearly toppling with shock and in my hurry to halt, I clutched the banister and clung to it, feeling a bit weak.

  “Watson is my right hand in these matters.”

  Sherlock! And the good Dr. Watson, of course, both of them at the base of the stairway, with Jackanapes trying to tell them that only Holmes would be admitted.

  And there, halfway down the stairs and no more than twenty feet away from them, I stood in plain sight and in great disarray of feature, gawping like a dead fish.

  Dr. Watson, thank my lucky stars—for had he looked at me and recognised me as Dr. Ragostin’s “secretary,” that life would have been all over for me—the good doctor did not see me. He stood staring off towards one of the salons as if Mesmerised, perhaps by the presence of Mr. Gladstone.

  But Sherlock’s gaze, hawklike, flew to me. “Enola!” he cried with the most intense excitement and fixity of expression.

  Because I could not stop looking at him, yet could not stay, I stumbled backwards up the steps, retreating.

  But my brother Sherlock did not move. “Enola,” he called. “Stop. Wait. Trust me. Please.”

  But I truly heard his words only afterwards, like an echo in my dishevelled mind as I tore myself away, fleeing like a deer. Back through drawing-room and music-room I sped, and now, belatedly and in blind panic, I thought of the service stairway—but I could not find it! Past the grand piano, past the pedestal table, through passageways beyond, turning after turning I opened door after door to discover only antechambers, and I could hear Sherlock’s energetic footfalls behind me, and his voice: “Enola! Confound the girl, where’s she got to?” Evidently he had pushed past Jackanapes to run upstairs after me, and no doubt Watson had done the same, two against one—at the thought I sprinted even faster. I began to hear doors slamming as they followed my course. “Enola!”

  At this point, as lackwit luck would have it, I blundered upon a winding little stairway—but it led only upward. So up I went, to find myself once again outside Florence Nightingale’s door.

  I opened it, shot into the room, and shut the door behind me.

  From beneath her silken eiderdown comforter Miss Nightingale asked softly and sweetly, “Goodness. Whatever is going on?”

  Without answering, but seeing that the key stood in the keyhole, I locked the door. Then I darted across the room, around the end of Miss Nightingale’s massive bed, to the windows that provided such a lovely treetop-level view of her back garden, at the same time unfastening my belt and slipping it through the handle of my satchel. Blessedly, the force of my fear had pushed me beyond fumbling and shaking to a state of extraordinary dexterity and energy. Speedily I refastened my belt, thereby strapping my precious baggage to my waist, even as I scanned my prospects for escape. After a hasty look, I chose one window and flung it open wide.

  “Enola!” shouted my brother’s voice right outside the door, and I heard him rattle the knob.

  Miss Nightingale might, of course, have answered him, or got up out of bed, walked to the door, turned the key, and let him in. But she did none of those things. Instead, she lay where she was, watching, I suppose, as I clambered up upon the window-sill, leaned out, and launched myself like a monkey at the nearest tree branch.

  My fingers found wood; my hands grasped. Three storeys above the ground I dangled, and descent would have perhaps seemed difficult had not worse difficulties goaded me so that I spent no time in contemplation. Like a veritable orangutan I swung, dropped, clutched another bough, dropped again, scrambled down, and so thumped to the ground. There I sped past a vegetable-garden, under a grape-arbour, behind a privy, and through a copse of linden trees to reach Miss Nightingale’s wrought-iron fence. As I vaulted it, I caught a glimpse of Miss Nightingale—her oddly angled white headgear was unmistakable—at the window from which I had exited. Though I could scarcely see her expression from the distance, she appeared to observe me with serene interest. I saw no sign of Dr. Watson or my brother.

  Once I had got well away—on the Underground, riding through a tunnel like a passageway to Hell, densely dark and choked with smoke—I finally had time and presence of mind to think.

  Shades of perdition, Enola, now what?

  At this very moment, I miserably surmised, my dear Sherlock was talking with my dear Miss Nightingale and putting too many twos and twos together. He would tell Miss Nightingale that I was his missing sister. Miss Nightingale would tell him that the missing Mrs. Tupper was my landlady. Heavens. With a helpless, sinking feeling that traversed the whole of my interior, I realised that I could not go back to Mrs. Tupper’s house, for surely Sherlock, as part of his investigation, would find out where she lived.

  Therefore, I now had no home.

  Nowhere to go, really, for if I were followed—I could not really say, after all, where Sher
lock was, or more villainously, he of the Classic Profile—certainly I must not chance leading either of them to Dr. Ragostin’s office.

  So I had no refuge.

  And no plan.

  Seldom had I felt so wretched—

  Now come, Enola, this will not do.

  The voice within my head was Mum’s, yet mine. Even if I never saw my mother again, she lived on within me.

  You are in danger of losing your freedom, but Mrs. Tupper is in danger of losing her life. After you have found your unfortunate landlady, then you may worry about yourself.

  Taking a deep breath of the Underground’s acrid air, I shut my eyes to the external darkness.

  Now think.

  Very well.

  Who had kidnapped Mrs. Tupper?

  Any of “the people involved,” Florence Nightingale had said, might wish to secure the message so as to prevent scandal.

  What “people involved”?

  And what turn of events had involved them? Mrs. Tupper had lived for more than thirty years in peace with her crinoline crammed into her wardrobe; why now, suddenly, all this turmoil and trouble?

  I had no idea.

  However, thanks to the leather case which I had long since freed from my belt, I did still have the message.

  I ought to finish decoding it.

  CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

  I NEEDED A COPY OF THE MORSE CODE.

  Where could I go to find one? The British Museum? Pfui. Den of nasty old men. I needed a haven, a sanctuary. I also, badly—as I had partaken of none of Miss Nightingale’s scones—needed something to eat.

  Finally my mind resumed functioning properly, for such a welcome thought occurred to me that I actually smiled. Exiting the Underground at the appropriate station, I sought a secluded corner and tidied myself a bit, then walked out again into London’s streets, looking smartly about me. There was no sign of the pleasant-faced villain who had been following me, or of any other danger.

  Making towards a main thoroughfare, I hailed a cab.

  “High Street,” I told the cabbie, for I did not wish to sing out for all the world to hear my precise destination.

  A bit later, with a sigh of relief, I walked into London’s, and perhaps the world’s, first Professional Women’s Club. I had not been here before, but I knew of the place by reputation. Just as men’s clubs admitted no women, this small fortress admitted no men. But whereas men’s clubs require new members to be sponsored by the old, the Professional Women’s Club democratically welcomed any female who could pay the membership fee—which was quite substantial enough to keep out the undesirable classes.

  After writing a cheque and receiving my membership card, I went on in, had a look around at the comfortable appointments of this sanctuary, nodded at a few other members (the younger ones, I noticed, clad much as I was), ordered tea and sandwiches, and settled myself in the library with volume M of the encyclopaedia.

  Several hours, more tea, and another tray of sandwiches later, turned out as follows:

  HAVE PROOF WREFORD SELLING SUPPLIES CONSTANTINOPLE MARKET APPEALED CRUIKSHANKS HALL RAGLAN NO AVAIL OFFICERS CALLOUS OR WORSE PROFITTING WHILE MEN FREEZE STARVE DIE BEG YOU USE INFLUENCE VR DESPAIRING FN

  F.N. was of course Florence Nightingale, and V.R. was Victoria Regina, that is to say, Queen Victoria, but Wreford? Cruikshanks? Hall? Raglan?

  “Crimean Conflict,” in volume C of the Britannica, gave me to know that Cruikshanks was a general in that war, Hall the chief medical examiner, Wreford the army’s remarkably inefficient purveyor, and Raglan the charming but utterly incompetent commander of the whole bloody mess, as exemplified by the Charge of the Light Brigade, hundreds of cavalrymen sent galloping into death due to an error in orders.

  Looking up my suspects individually, I discovered that, like Lord Sidney Whimbrel, they were deceased, beyond my reach to locate or question.

  What, therefore, was I now to do?

  I had no idea, for presence of mind was difficult to maintain. Willy-nilly, even though I knew it was most unlikely that he could have traced me here, nevertheless I kept imagining Sherlock Holmes waiting to pounce upon me the moment I set foot outside the door. So disturbing were these thoughts that I could not sit still; I roamed the Professional Women’s Club, the pleasant modern Oriental furnishings of reading-room, card-room, tea-room, and morning-room lost upon me as I fretted, imagining the most grotesque scenarios involving my brother Sherlock, Miss Nightingale, Mycroft, Dr. Watson, Scotland Yard, magistrates in white wigs, and ghoulish boarding school matrons, ad infinitum.

  Enola, this will not do. I needed to think about Mrs. Tupper.

  In order to force myself to do so, I realised, I must make a list.

  So, taking the nearest seat—on a chintz-upholstered camel-back sofa, very chic, for I found myself in a charming little drawing-room where a few older women had gathered to chat—with paper and pencil in hand I began to write:

  Where is Mrs. Tupper?

  Who is Classic Profile?

  Whose brougham took her away?

  For what purpose? To speak with

  whom?

  Et cetera. I started out, as I am sure the gentle reader can see, rather stupid, partly because I was so perturbed of mind and partly because of the distraction of pleasant, intelligent voices conversing all around me. For instance, a tall woman in a loose, comfortable “aesthetic” dress, with her grey hair flowing down her back, was saying, “. . . poor dear Rodney, such a pleasant, well-meaning gentleman, yet so sorely lacking in backbone, while his younger brother—”

  “One must wonder,” put in a different woman with a laugh, “how the theory of evolution would account for all the power’s being given to the older brother, yet all the potency to the younger.”

  “That’s not evolution, dear. That’s our ridiculous laws of primogeniture.”

  “It’s a shame,” said another of the elderly women, “for Rodney will do almost anything Geoffrey says, and Geoffrey’s strength of character is not always the best of character, or so I have heard.”

  Why was I listening to gossip of people I didn’t even know, when I so badly needed to think? Yet I could not seem to shut my ears. I knew I should move to another room, yet did not.

  A comfortable, matronly voice was saying, “Yes, his dear mother would be sorely dismayed. But then, good character in that family has generally run on the female side.”

  “Well, doesn’t it generally in any civilised family?”

  There was a ripple of laughter, during which the grey-haired aesthetic woman remarked, “Speaking of good families and characters, has anyone heard anything of Lady Eudoria Holmes?”

  My mother! Hearing her name spoken aloud in such a comfortable, offhand fashion, I felt such a pang to my heart that for a moment I couldn’t breathe, the world spun, I might faint—nonsense, I never faint; I must not miss a word. Making a great effort to control my speeding pulse and panting breath, I stiffened, eavesdropping intently, although I did not dare to look around at the speakers.

  “. . . no news of her at all since she disappeared. One does not know whether she is yet alive.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s alive all right,” put in a third, good-humoured voice. “She’s far too strong minded to lie down and die just yet. I imagine she took off, as the youngsters would say.”

  A murmur of agreement sounded all around.

  “I hope so,” said the aesthetic woman. “I hope she’s finally had a chance to live her life on her own terms.”

  These women had been friends of my mother. Friends of my mother! How peculiarly that simple thought, and their proximity, worked upon my sensibilities. Every fibre of my being ached with longing; how I wished I could feel as confidently as they that Mum was alive, and well, and enjoying herself.

  “Perhaps she’s gone overseas,” said the good-humoured woman. “She always yearned to travel.”

  I had never known that!

  “If so, let us hope she wanders far from the Ba
lkans.”

  “Trouble there, as always?”

  “There and here. I’ve heard that someone is endeavouring to stir up some sort of Crimean War scandal.”

  “Again? But why would anyone wish to dredge up that ruck of muck now?”

  “Why, indeed.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea.”

  “Is it about Wreford again, perhaps? Any rehashing of that sordid affair would be most injurious . . .”

  “. . . today’s progressive spirit . . .”

  As they spoke of politics and reform, at last I was able to turn a deaf ear to their conversation, dismiss my thoughts and feelings regarding Mum (I had become quite adept at doing this), and write:

  What turn of events started this dreadful

  business?

  Who wanted Mrs. Tupper to deliver

  her message, and why?

  Who stood to benefit? Enemies of

  reform?

  To embarrass Florence Nightingale?

  Who knew that Mrs. Tupper, of all

  people, had a message for “the Bird”?

  That brought me up short, pencil poised in air as I stared at nothing, for at last, you see, I had asked myself the right question: Who knew of the existence of the cryptic crinoline? Given that no regular “carriers” for “the Bird” were involved, and Mrs. Tupper herself evidently did not realise her fine apparel’s significance . . .

  Who knew? Certainly not Wreford, Cruikshanks, Hall, or Raglan! Or their heirs.

  When a message is sent in secret code, who must have knowledge of it? The sender. And the carrier—usually. And the person to whom the message is being sent might perhaps know that he should be in readiness to receive it.

  Florence Nightingale knew.