The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (12 page)

Quite a good place for a makeshift prison.

I stopped where I was, turning to look at Lord Rodney’s face.

And he halted, submitting to my scrutiny. Although very pale, and rather down in the mouth, he seemed composed. “If you wish me truly to be a Lord Whimbrel worthy of my father’s name,” he said, sounding not particularly strong but not too unsteady, either, “then you must agree to trust me. Done?”

And indeed, what was my alternative? To run away, leaving Mrs. Tupper to her fate? I hesitated only a moment before I answered. “Very well. Done.”

With a weary nod he beckoned me forward to a narrow, heavy dark door. He produced a large key and turned it in the lock. Opening the door and standing aside, he motioned for me to enter.

I confess that I did not immediately walk in. Rather, I paused in the doorway of a small room furnished with numerous gas-lamps and sconces of candles, by the shining light of which I saw, not necessarily in this order:

A young maid sitting in a straight chair with her hands folded, waiting, as if something else might be needed.

A table upon which stood a stereopticon.

Beside an overstuffed easy chair.

In which, propped up by pillows as she viewed the clever three-dimensional images that had been provided for her amusement, sat Mrs. Tupper.

My feelings can scarcely be imagined, so strong and strangely mixed were they—relief so great that it made me weak in the knees, but also astonishment, irrational outrage, and a bit of envy—nobody gave
me
fresh strawberries or a stereopticon! Altogether I found myself nearly overcome by disorderly emotion which I had no time to discipline, for at the moment I saw Mrs. Tupper, she also saw me. With a mynah-bird cry she tottered to her feet and toppled towards me. I hurried forward lest she fall. She hastened to fling her arms around my waist.

“Miss Meshle!” She was weeping, and so, I must admit, was I, and the maid rose, curtsied, then exited the room, no doubt at Lord Rodney’s silent signal. He stood just inside the door, waiting for the tempest to calm, with the look of one who has forgot his umbrella.

“Oh, Miss Meshle,” iterated Mrs. Tupper, “oh, Miss Meshle, I’m that glad to see you, I am, Miss Meshle!”

Patting her head, which came barely to my shoulder, I noticed that she wore a crisp, new white house-cap with lavender ribbons, and a new lavender dress to match. Speaking wryly in an attempt to dry out my feelings, I said, “It appears you have not been mistreated.”

“Eh?” She put her head up like a turtle, a hand behind one ear.

Instantly all seemed so annoyingly normal that I calmed. I sighed deeply, then bawled directly into her ear, “You’re all right?”

“Oh! Yes, thanks to this’un.” Still tearful, she bobbed towards Lord Rodney. “’E’s as kind a gennelmun as ever wore spats. But t’other’un, ’e wants to throw me in the river!”

“I have never in my life worn spats. And t’other’un,” said Lord Rodney with an undertone of dark humour in his voice, “will be on a ship to Australia within the week.”

Mrs. Tupper, who of course could not hear him, cried, “I been that scared, I ’ave!”

“Poor dear.” Of course she had been terribly frightened, not knowing who these people were, or what they wanted, or which one was older, or younger, or more likely to get his way. “There, there.” Muttering soothing inanities even though I knew quite well she could not hear me, I patted her humped back, speaking over her head to Lord Rodney. “An excellent idea. Your brother’s talents will be much more useful and appreciated in such a wild place,” I told him quite sincerely.

But I am afraid I cannot remember what he replied, for when I directed my eyes towards him, I saw a face looking in at a window behind him.

This was most startling, considering that we stood in a room four storeys above the ground. Equally startling was the face, its sharp nose actually pressed to the glass, making a white triangle amidst a wrack of grey hair.

Yet, rather than jumping and screaming, I smiled. Indeed, I gave my brother Sherlock quite an impudent look, imagining how he must be hanging on to the stonework outside. I dearly wished to stick out my tongue at him, but I could not, of course, or Lord Rodney would have seen.

Instead, I inquired of that nervous person, “Might we go downstairs?”

“Of course, Miss Meshle—that is your name, is it not?”

It was not, strictly speaking, so I replied sweetly, “There would be no point in my denying it.”

“Mrs. Tupper possesses in you a remarkably loyal lodger, Miss Meshle. By all means, let us go where we can all sit down. Shall I order some tea?”

“That would be delightful.”

THE NEGOTIATIONS, IN A RATHER GRANDIOSE sitting-room, took some time. Lord Rodney required a great deal of reassuring, yet at the same time I wished him to give Mrs. Tupper a great deal of money; those two objectives were difficult to reconcile or to accomplish simultaneously.

I tried to reason with him. “Mrs. Tupper has no idea of your name, or your brother’s name, or who you are, or where she has been taken—is this not so?”

He looked ruefully upon the old woman, who, much comforted by tea and my presence, had dozed off in her blue velvet armchair. “Yes, I believe that is correct.”

“Doubtless you have noticed, also, that she is somewhat hampered in her ability to communicate.”

“True.”

“And she has not a vindictive bone in her body. Once safely home, with some recompense for her trouble, she will say nothing more of the matter. No East Ender ever willingly speaks to the police.”

“What about you? In your note you said you would go to the authorities.”

“I said what I felt was necessary at the time. Surely, now that you have met me, you understand that I can be discreet.”

“To the contrary. I understand mostly that you can brandish a dagger.”

“Just as any sensible woman would do under the circumstances.”

He eyed me doubtfully. “You’re no ordinary woman.”

I fear I rolled my eyes. “I have trusted you. Now you must trust me. Once you have provided for Mrs. Tupper’s financial security in her old age—”

“You want no money for yourself?” he interrupted suspiciously.

“None, I assure you.”

“And you will tell Florence Nightingale nothing of any of this?”

“Nothing at all. I see no reason why I should ever set foot in her gracious home again.”

“Then you promise me no ill consequences?”

“None at all.” For myself, I was thinking bitterly, the consequences would be far worse than any he faced: because Sherlock knew of Mrs. Tupper, I would have to give up lodging with her and find myself a new place at once—unless, as might very well be the case, Sherlock were to catch me tonight, immediately upon my exit from Whimbrel Hall! All too aware that he was waiting for me, from time to time I caught a glimpse of him skulking outside the sitting-room windows.

Focussing with difficulty on Lord Rodney, I continued. “Certainly you can see that I bear you, personally, not the slightest ill-will. And for the house of Whimbrel, I cherish only the greatest respect. Indeed, I share Florence Nightingale’s high opinion.”

And so I wheedled for a considerable length of time. Eventually, after much coaxing and many promises, a rather handsome sum changed hands—I am sure that poor Lord Rodney believed, despite all my protestations to the contrary, that he was bribing me for silence—and I reached into my satchel and presented His Lordship with a tangle of blue ribbons embroidered with posies.

Understandably, he seemed taken aback. “What’s this?”

“The missing message,” I told him, “and here is the way I worked it out.” I handed him the papers on which I had pencilled the code. Then I stood and walked over to touch Mrs. Tupper upon the shoulder, awakening her as I told Lord Rodney, “We should go now. I would be obliged if you would summon your carriage.”

This was very necessary in order for me to escape my brother, for certainly Mrs. Tupper could not run or climb trees with me.

“I will do nothing of the sort.” Lord Rodney sounded all too much as if he had thoroughly discovered he was indeed Lord Whimbrel; worse, he sounded peevishly wrought, as if he had expected something more to his masculine taste for his money. “You are going nowhere. Sit down and explain this nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense.” Although I should have known better, his temper caught me off guard, and my tone heightened to match his. “It has cost me a great deal of trouble, and—”

And Heaven only knows how things would have gone if it were not that, just then, a considerable crash resounded upstairs, and shouts, and the sound of feet pounding down the stairway, and a great deal of hubbub throughout the house as Geoffrey Whimbrel thundered into view, pursued by two footmen in buckle-shoes, stockings, knee-breeches, red jackets, and white powdered wigs. It would make an interesting study, why decorative servants must dress like the upper classes of the prior century. Most impractical. One footman’s wig had been jolted askew and the other’s flew right off as they pelted after his younger lordship. At the foot of the stairs the butler, Billings, joined the pursuit, bellowing unnecessarily, “He’s broken out, my Lord!”

Already Lord Rodney had jumped up and darted towards the large, museum-like entryway through which his younger brother was running for the door. I also leapt up to go see, and Mrs. Tupper, at her best hunchbacked speed, did likewise. Indeed, shrieks and yells both feminine and masculine sounded from the direction of the kitchen and other nether regions as the entire household came running to observe the fracas. Seemingly out of nowhere a crowd assembled.

The two footmen, the butler, and Lord Rodney attached themselves to Geoffrey like bulldogs to a bear, but even their combined strength failed to halt his charge for the door. They clung to his coattails and clawed at his shoulders as he lifted the latches and turned the bolts, flinging the door open—

Clearly visible in the firelight of the flambeaux, on the marble apron just outside the door waited a remarkably tall, angular personage with a great deal of unkempt grey hair and beard.

I was perhaps the only one not totally astonished.

Except, apparently, Geoffrey. Enraged or desperate beyond such petty sentiments as surprise, he took no pause. Tearing free of the annoying people clinging to his back, he hurtled out the door as if to run right over the greybeard.

But he ran instead into what might as well have been a bolt of lightning. Most swiftly and unexpectedly the tall man slashed a chopping blow with his edgewise hand, one long leg extended—alas, I cannot fully describe the manoeuvres which I believe, from references in the writings of Dr. Watson, demonstrated the Eastern martial art of “jujitsu,” nor can I detail the single-handed combat that landed Geoffrey on his back with the greybeard atop him, nor could I take pleasure in my brother’s prowess or in the astonishment of the onlookers observing a thin old man knocking down a strong young aristocrat. I retain only the most fragmentary memory of any of this, for I did not stay to watch.

Instead, taking Mrs. Tupper by the hand, I hurried her towards the back of the house, intent on getting out there while everyone, including Sherlock—especially Sherlock—was busied at the front.

Although Mrs. Tupper kept up the best pace she could, it was not good enough, so I actually caught her up in my arms, slung her slight weight over one shoulder, and ran with her through hallways and serving-ways that were utterly deserted. So also was the kitchen. Out its door and up the steps of its area we scuttled, making a hasty escape through the usual maze of outbuildings—summer-kitchen, tool-shed, dog-kennel, carriage-house—until we reached the back gate, which stopped us but a moment; such safeguards, meant to keep intruders
out,
are simple enough to open from the inside. Still carrying Mrs. Tupper—although I confess I was starting to breathe quite hard—I trotted along a back lane until I achieved a street.

There, under the murky glow of a gas-lamp and out of sight of Whimbrel Hall, I felt a bit more secure. Setting Mrs. Tupper down on her own two tottery feet, I stooped to examine her for signs of damage. “Are you all right?” I asked—softly, for I did not wish to attract the attention of the neighbourhood by shouting—I hoped Mrs. Tupper might be able to read my lips.

She seemed to. “Miss Meshle,” she quavered, her voice as well as her eyes rather watery, “I’m so everlastingly obliged to you, I—”

“Shhh.” I had to look away from her, for in that moment it truly smote me, with great pain to my heart, that I must leave her.

And then I, Enola, whose name backwards spells “alone,” would be even more lonely than ever, for Mrs. Tupper—my deaf, elderly landlady who served the most dreadful suppers—had nevertheless been, sometimes, like a mother to me.

It was the worst thing I could have thought, for my mother . . . more and more, although I tried to deny it, I felt irrationally certain that I would never see Mum again, that she had succumbed to old age, and the Gypsies, illiterate nomads, had left her somewhere in an unmarked grave.

Barely holding back tears, I took Mrs. Tupper’s arm and hurried her along the street until at last, seeing a cab approaching, I hailed it.

Inside the concealment of the four-wheeler I handed over to Mrs. Tupper the money I had extracted from Lord Rodney Whimbrel, shushing her astonished protests; I needed to feel sure that she would never go hungry or lack for means. I saw to it that she tucked the hundred-pound notes deeply into her bosom. When we arrived at her lowly hovel in the East End of London, we both got out, but I ordered the cab to wait.