Private Investigation (2 page)

It was answered almost at once by a rather flamboyant man with curly hair, a distracted expression and a brass-and-leather contraption on his head that magnified his right eye through a series of aligned lenses. His iris looked like a pale goldfish swimming behind thick glass. Inspectacles were the latest advance in clockwork technology, and seemed to be halfway between an elaborate monocle and a ghastly fashion mistake, though Lilly understood that despite their bizarre appearance they were all the rage. He adjusted a dial near his temple, and one of the lenses revolved in its fitting with an alarming mechanical whirring sound. He peered at her.

“John!” he called. “There’s some sort of woman at the door. I expect she’s for you.” Then he whirled on his heel and bounded up the stairs two at a time, leaving Lilly standing with her mouth half-open and her hand extended.

By the time another man came down the stairs, she had composed herself enough to withdraw her hand and school her features into an expression that looked slightly less stunned.

This man was shorter, without the gangling, long-limbed flamboyance of his fellow. He moved with a smooth, assured gait and, when Lilly held her hand out again, he took it in a firm, warm, reassuring grip. “John Dermott,” he said with a smile. “Please excuse my associate—he was raised by wolves.”

Lilly started. “Not really?” she blurted, then blushed to the roots of her hair.

He laughed, but she didn’t feel like she was being mocked—more as though she was being asked to share a joke, as between friends. “Not really, of course, but given his grasp of the social graces it would be as good an explanation as any.”

Lilly smiled, still feeling somewhat bewildered and off-kilter, but finding herself disposed to like this man. “My name is Miss Elizabeth James,” she said. “I saw your advertisement in
The Times
this morning.”

“Splendid—splendid!” Mr Dermott beamed at her. “Tell me, Miss James, are you well-organised, efficient, hardworking?”

“Why…yes.” Lilly handed him an envelope. “I have here my certificates from the Metropolitan School of Shorthand, and a letter of reference from Miss Caffrey, who instructed us in typing, filing and mechanical contrivances for office use.” The reference, she knew, talked about her in the most glowing possible terms.

Mr Dermott scanned the reference and nodded approvingly. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am being unforgivably rude. Won’t you come inside? We’re lacking a housekeeper at the moment, but I daresay I can scare up some tea and biscuits while we discuss the role.”

Lilly’s stomach grumbled its approval at the mention of food and she felt her cheeks go pink again as she hoped fervently that Mr Dermott hadn’t heard the gurgling over the clanking and whirring of the vehicles passing by on the street.

Lilly followed him up the narrow stairs, wondering quite what she might have got herself into here. John Dermott seemed perfectly agreeable, but the first man—Lucien Doyle, presumably—had seemed downright eccentric. She shrugged to herself as they reached the door of 43a. John Dermott paused with his hand on the handle and turned back to her. He eyed her critically. “Your reference describes you as meticulous, Miss James. Does that mean you’re likely to be distressed by a little…mess?”

Her lips twitched at the corners. “I have younger brothers, Mr Dermott.”

He hesitated. “By a lot of mess, then?”

The twitch became a smile. “Six of them. I’m not afraid of mess, Mr Dermott. Mess is afraid of me.”

He nodded his approval. “Nevertheless, Miss James, gird your loins.”

She wasn’t entirely sure it was appropriate for a gentleman to be talking about her loins, but in any case she followed him as he opened the door and ushered her through…into a scene of absolute chaos.

Papers lay in bundles and piles on every surface, and as Mr Dermott closed the door quietly behind them, the muffled click was enough to start an avalanche in one of the stacks, which slid with a rustle to the floor.

Any surface that wasn’t covered with papers and books held weirdly bubbling contraptions of brass and blown glass, machinery Lilly could not immediately identify, bottles and jars containing…well, she glanced briefly at them, mentally classified them as ‘specimens’ and decided to ignore them.  The curled, pale shapes in the cloudy formaldehyde made her feel slightly queasy.

“Well,” she said, with a brisk efficiency she judged would not offend Mr Dermott, who had already shown himself to be a man of great good humour. “I take it these are the papers and effects that need to be ‘put in order’.”

He smiled again, and she found herself warming to him even more. “Please take a seat, Miss James. I will see about the tea I mentioned.”

As he left the room, Lilly glanced around for somewhere to sit. The man with the wild hair and the bad manners was reclining on the settee with a pained expression that suggested he didn’t want his papers put in order, and didn’t intend to move for anyone who seemed to be of a paper-ordering disposition. The overstuffed armchair was occupied by a half-assembled machine she couldn’t identify, but which was a worrying combination of wires, springs, dials and what looked like a boiler. She eyed it warily, decided she didn’t want to risk moving it, and perched uncomfortably on the arm of the chair instead. It wasn’t the most ladylike position, but this didn’t seem to be the sort of establishment where one stood on ceremony.

When John Dermott returned with two cups of tea and handed one to her, she gave him a grateful smile. He went over to the settee and prodded his friend gently until he sat up, scowling. As soon as Mr Dermott was settled on the settee himself, his friend lay straight back down again with his head in the other man’s lap.

Good gracious. Perhaps he really was raised by wolves.

He certainly didn’t conform to the usual standard of etiquette.

But six pounds a week was six pounds a week. And it seemed as though there was enough work here to keep her going…well, indefinitely, really. She had to weigh up oddity against lime marmalade…and she really hated lime marmalade.

Before long, she and John had agreed to use each other’s Christian names—at least when they were at Jermayne Street. The detective was introduced, as she had suspected, as Lucien, whereupon he gave a dismissive little salute without ever opening his eyes or lifting his head from John’s lap. He looked as if the whole idea of having his papers sorted out made him feel unbearably weary and put-upon.

Lilly was rather enjoying herself. She had taken to John, and was intrigued by Lucien’s flamboyant strangeness. John, as he outlined the duties she’d be expected to undertake, had given her to understand that the job was hers if she wanted it. This was a far cry from Mrs Langley’s regime and she leant forward, feeling rather daring, and said, “Is he always this ill-mannered?”

“You’ll have to excuse Lucien’s eccentricity,” John said in a confidential voice, though Lucien’s tut of exasperation from his lap made it clear he had heard the remark.

“Is he likely to start baying at the moon and chasing rabbits?”

“No.” Then John’s face took on a hunted expression. “Well, probably not. In his defence he is a very gifted private detective. The Metropolitan Police consult him on a regular basis. His facility for deductive reasoning…”

“Like Sherlock Holmes!” Lilly said gaily, and was surprised when Lucien sat up abruptly, fixed her with a jaundiced eye, and said, “Sherlock Holmes is a fool.”

“Oh, but his thinking is so original!” Lilly protested. “What is it he says, now? Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Lucien snorted. “And that is precisely where he lacks imagination—in eliminating the impossible. One would think one could expect more from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as an author. He is supposed to be the champion of the spiritualist movement, yet in his stories he insists on the merely pedestrian as the solution to every problem.”

He moved with an odd, long-limbed grace as he swivelled his legs off the settee and rose to his feet, gesticulating with his hands while he spoke. His fingers moved with intricate fluidity, as though he was playing an invisible musical instrument. “Séances, for example. Have you ever attended a séance, Miss James?”

“Elizabeth,” John murmured.

“Lilly to my friends,” she said, and they gave each other a conspiratorial look that gave her a warm sensation of fellow-feeling.

“Yes, yes, Lilly,” continued Lucien. “A modern woman. First name terms. A graduate of the Metropolitan School for Shorthand.”

Lilly felt a touch of surprise at this. She had thought him entirely self-absorbed—it seemed he had taken in more than she had given him credit for.

“I’m sure you’re a fan of all the new technologies—stencillographic oscillators and inspectacles and all the other accoutrements of the rational age…”

“Come now,” said Lilly. And she walked over and picked up the contraption he had been wearing when he’d come to the door, swinging it from her forefinger by one of its leather straps. “You wear inspectacles yourself.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “but John invented those, of course, no matter what the patent office might have to say on the subject.”

He’d invented inspectacles? And was presumably responsible for the contraption in the armchair that had now started giving off occasional, alarming hisses and plumes of steam.

Before she could do more than glance at John in surprise, Lucien continued, “But just because I value the advantages modern steam technology can bring me, it doesn’t mean I dismiss the inexplicable, the ineffable, out of hand. So tell me, Miss James, have you ever been to a séance?”

She noticed he deliberately did not use the less formal method of address he had been granted, and decided that he clearly expected her to say that of course she had never been involved in any such nonsense. So she enjoyed the expression of surprise in his eyes—extraordinary eyes, she now noticed, pale grey, almost silver—when she said, “Of course. Twice.”

He studied her carefully, then his expression twisted into one of disbelief and dismissal. “Of course. For six pounds a week, I expect you’ve seen fairies dancing in the garden. Tell me, Miss James, where were these séances held?”

She knew he expected her make vague noises about some backroom table-rapping at an anonymous address to establish the story he believed to be patently false. So it was with some smugness that she said, “Doctor Moriarty Cain’s House of Spiritual Solace.”

It was perfectly true. On the first occasion, Mrs Langley had invited her along in the hopes that Lilly might be a convert to the cause, and Lilly had sat politely through the performance. Doctor Cain’s young girl assistant had spoken in a growling voice, supposed to be that of the late, long-suffering Mr Langley, and told her landlady he was in a better place. The next morning she had been given raspberry jam with her breakfast—a sign of high favour indeed.

On the second occasion, she had not been able to resist pointing out the very obvious tricks the so-called medium was using. Manipulating the specially-designed table with his knee to make it appear to rise and spin. Using a scrap of chalk affixed to the inside of his finger joint to produce ‘automatic writing’. Playing, essentially, on the desires of the grieving and the hopeless.

So she did think a little less of Lucien when he offered her a seat on the settee, hurried out for a plate of biscuits, and returned to sit next to her, suddenly attentive and willing to call her Lilly now that she’d apparently established her credentials as…what? A credulous ninny?

“Tell me, Lilly, what did you make of these séances you attended?”

She decided to make no bones about it. Through a mouthful of sticky gingersnap, she told him about her landlady’s character—essentially that of a woman who hoped to bully and nag her husband beyond the grave. Of her one-sided devotion to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And she told him of what she suspected about fishing line or cat gut to give the impression of floating, and phosphorescent paint to give the impression of an unearthly glow.

So she was surprised, given his previous words on dismissing the uncanny, when he continued attentive and said eagerly, “And now, Lilly? You are talking about more than a year ago. Could you get in to Doctor Cain’s House of Spiritual Solace now? As a bona fide devotee?”

Lilly selected another biscuit from the plate and considered. “I suspect, Lucien, that with a little help from you, I could. If you could school yourself to correct society manners for half an hour or so.”

He rose quite considerably in her estimation when he did not take offence at this, but instead asked her what she had in mind.

And so it was decided. Lilly was to take up her post the following morning, for a half day, calling at nine in the morning and forewarned that Lucien was often bad-tempered if disturbed before noon. She didn’t find that piece of intelligence frightfully surprising. Then, once she had returned home for lunch, which she chose not to mention would consist of cold toast she had scrounged from her breakfast, Lucien and John would call on Mrs Langley. They would be scrubbed, clean-shaven and on their best behaviour, in their roles as consulting detective and his faithful assistant, under the guise of requesting a reference for their putative secretary. Back in favour with Mrs Langley, Lilly would ask if she could accompany her to the séance the following week…though with what object she had not yet ascertained.

She wasn’t certain she cared. She had liked John from the moment she had met him, and the more she knew of him, the less she thought Lucien was obnoxious and the more she thought he was intriguing. And six pounds was six pounds, and raspberry jam was raspberry jam.

Chapter Three

When she arrived at 43a Jermayne Street the next morning, her newly-cut key in hand and an efficient, friendly smile on her lips, she was alarmed to hear moans and what sounded like grunts of pain coming from behind the closed door. Was somebody fighting in there?

No doubt detectives and their inventor friends attracted all sorts of trouble. Perhaps she hadn’t thought this through! The system of education at Chancery lane had been thorough and varied, but even in this progressive age typing schools didn’t offer young ladies instruction in…in
fisticuffs
. But she could hardly just turn around and leave them if they were in trouble. She jumped as a stack of paper found its tipping point and tumbled onto the floor, then she froze. She didn’t even know where they were—beyond this sitting room where she’d been interviewed the day before, she didn’t know the layout of their living area.