The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (8 page)

“International Morse Code uses short and long sounds, which are written out as dots and dashes.”

Yes! Already, instinctively, I thought of the miniature roses as dots. The daisies—very rudimentary blossoms of five petals; starflowers—had to be the dashes. Grabbing . . . . / . * / . . . * / . V et cetera from my satchel and referring to the chart in the encyclopaedia (which the gentle reader will find reproduced at the end of this book for the sake of education and amusement), I began to decode—no simple process, as I had to scan the entire alphabet in search of each letter.

Four dots—H. A leaf to divide it from the next letter. Dot, dash—A. Another leaf. Dot, dot, dot, dash—V. Leaf. Single dot—E. Two leaves?

End of word!

HAVE.
Have!

Quite a while later I had decoded the first five words—HAVE PROOF WREFORD SELLING SUPPLIES—but the bulk of the message remained before me, and I faced a decision: to sit here spending more hours doing this, while Heaven only knew what might be happening to Mrs. Tupper, or to speak with Florence Nightingale at once? For I considered that I now knew how to achieve this seemingly impossible feat.

Deciding on the latter, then, I returned my papers and pencil to their satchel and approached the formidable Mrs. Crowley at her desk. This time, when I asked to speak with Florence Nightingale and she handed me the portable desk with its creamy paper and dark blue ink, I smiled and accepted it without demur.

It cannot with accuracy be said that I wrote upon the paper; rather, I penned. Or drew. Quite quickly and simply I traced:

Blotting, then folding this short and unsigned missive, I handed it over, and, as the young fellow in knickerbockers took it up, I went and stood at the bottom of the stairs.

In less than a minute, Jackanapes (as I had come to think of him) trotted down again with quite a startled look on his face to tell me, “Miss Nightingale says she will see you. Follow me, please.”

 

My every inference concerning the remarkable Florence Nightingale proved wrong, as became apparent to me within a few minutes. At the very top of the house, in a spacious chamber awash with light from undraped windows, she awaited me: a plump, sweet, smiling old-fashioned beauty sitting up in a large bed richly and tidily arrayed with ribbon-edged pillows and silky eiderdown “puff.” Her hair, parted in the centre and smoothed back in the simple manner of her youth, had not yet turned grey! Her lovely, symmetrical face showed scarcely a line! In every way she seemed as radiant as her sunny bedchamber, from which one heard nothing of the many people two storeys below, only birdsong from a back garden one could view through her open windows as if enjoying serene Eden in the midst of London City.

Just as serenely Miss Nightingale greeted me. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” She indicated an armchair pulled up to the far side of the bed, pleasantly situated near the windows. With unconcealed interest she studied me as I rounded her foot-board and sat down.

“I was expecting someone a great deal older,” she remarked, “given this.” She held up the paper upon which I had written, in floral Morse code,
S.O.S.
“How do you know about my roses and daisies? But first, please, what is your name?”

Amazing, the way she exuded courtesy yet spared no honesty and wasted no time. Her manner allowed me to answer her truly. “Any name I could tell you, Miss Nightingale, I would have to invent, and at the moment I have small energy for dissembling.”

She nodded as if this were an ordinary enough answer. Far back from her forehead, as if to show off the impeccable sheen and symmetry of her hair, she wore an odd sort of white kerchief that tied beneath her chin and lavished a cascade of lace from the crown of her head to the collar of her velvet bed-jacket. This singular headgear nodded along with her.

“I can see you are much distraught,” she said softly—I was to learn that she was famous for never raising her voice, not once throughout her life or her years in the Crimea. “It would seem that your trouble somehow concerns me?”

“It might,” I said, and without further ado, as concisely as possible I detailed the circumstances of Mrs. Tupper’s abduction, starting with
CARRIER PIGEON, DELIVER YOUR BIRD-BRAINED MESSAGE AT ONCE OR YOU WILL BE SORRY YOU EVER LEFT SCUTARI
—the thornily handwritten message itself had disappeared along with my unfortunate landlady, but I knew the words by heart. Much as I knew the words that, according to Florrie, the bearded intruders had shouted at Mrs. Tupper: “We know you was a spy for the Bird!”

“Indeed, ‘the Bird’ is what they called me, those who opposed me,” responded Miss Nightingale, “and they represented me as a bird-woman in their political cartoons.” She spoke absently, with her back to me, for during my account she had turned around to rummage—I ought to explain that the headboard of her bed was actually a large, undoubtedly custom-made cubby-hole desk neatly packed with papers of all sorts, and that upon a green-draped table at her bedside more stacks of papers surrounded an electric lamp—an electric lamp! This was indeed a house of surprises, but I supposed that, driven to reform as she was, she had undertaken the expense so that she could write through the night. I had noticed that her hands, which looked far older than her face, were bent into crescents from constant writing.

Finding what she wanted, she turned back to me and showed it:
an elderly woman has been abducted by brigands,
et cetera, my note from the day before.

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “I wrote that.”

“And I answered it quite truthfully, dear. I simply do not recall Mrs. Tupper.”

Reaching into my satchel, I brought forth Mrs. Tupper’s wedding photograph, which I had carried along with me because of a presentiment that it might prove useful.

Miss Nightingale looked at this, and her gentle mouth formed an O of recognition.

“You remember her now?”

“Yes, dear, I do. I had forgotten, because she was not one of my regular couriers; I entrusted her only once, in an emergency, but her message was never delivered, and I have never found out why, or what became of her.”

“So you
were
a spy,” I whispered, much impressed.

“The commissioned officers of the army,” she replied sweetly, “fought me, a woman and a civilian, with rather more passion than they devoted to the Russian enemy. I fought back.”

“But I thought you and your nurses were there to help!”

She smiled rather sadly. “So we were, but the doctors and officers saw my presence as interference, and as a threat to their party-going, picnicking, polo-playing, horse-racing, high old good times. Which indeed it was. I had insane notions that the officers should spend their days looking after the welfare of their men, and the doctors should attend to the sick.”

“You mean—they didn’t?”

“The doctors—surgeons—excelled at lopping off the limbs of the wounded, but they never entered the fever-wards, such was their fear of themselves contracting the disease. Without supervision, the orderlies did as nearly as possible nothing, sometimes not even preparing food. So there, all alone except for one another, the sufferers lay in their own filth, their blankets heaving with lice . . .” Miss Nightingale broke off abruptly, her gaze focussing on me as if she were returning from a tragic past to a rather alarming present. “Tell me, my nameless friend: what ever became of the message I tried to send to Lord Whimbrel?”

I echoed, “Lord Whimbrel?”

“Yes, Sidney Whimbrel, a true statesman and my greatest ally.”

How very interesting. I had just looked at his silhouette.

Miss Nightingale continued, “No reform could have been undertaken without him; he had the ear of the queen. He has long since passed away, but his good name remains to be protected. . . . Do you know, where is that missing message?”

“If it was the one basted to Mrs. Tupper’s crinoline, I have it in my possession.”

For the first time forsaking her erect posture, Florence Nightingale sank back against her pillows, studying me. From the music room on the floor below drifted the pleasant notes of a piano; someone was playing Mozart.

“You are clever,” said Miss Nightingale in a way that made the statement neither praise nor censure. “Very well. You have my message that somehow went astray. I quite want it back, in order to avoid scandal.”

“Scandal?”

“The reforms to which I have devoted my life are at last agreed upon and under way, with previous animosities forgotten; it would be disastrous were anyone to bring up the past. What would induce you—”

“I care nothing for politics. I simply want to know who has abducted Mrs. Tupper!”

“But I have no idea who that might be. And I quite want to find out, perhaps almost as much as you do, for if she were to tell them about the message—”

“Mrs. Tupper,” I interrupted, frustration causing my voice to rise in marked contrast with the ever-level tones of my hostess, “is so exceedingly deaf that it will be very difficult for her to understand what they want of her. She was already deaf when you entrusted her with your ill-fated roses and daisies.”

“Oh, dear.” Miss Nightingale’s face showed, very briefly, emotion. “How foolish of me not to realise. But I gave her a card with the address—”

“She can read coarse-hand, with difficulty, but not script.”

“Oh, merciful heavens. But I assumed—whatever was I thinking?”

Softening my asperity, I acknowledged, “I imagine you had a great many pressing matters on your mind. In any event, as Mrs. Tupper understood not a word you said to her, one can assume she did not know what the card was for, or even realise she was carrying a message. The blackguards are currently cutting apart the blue dress you gave her, searching for something on paper. Now tell me, please, who are they?”

Florence Nightingale said again, “I don’t know.”

“But you could venture a guess!”

“As young Lord Whimbrel is just entering the House of Lords, I would guess that his enemies are trying to obtain this artefact in order to embarrass his family name. But equally I could guess that it could be any of the friends or descendants of the officers mentioned in the communication. Indeed, it would be difficult to name any involved person who would
not
like to find it, including myself.” So disarming was this admission that it convinced me of her innocence. “I truly do not know. But I shall find out.” She said this in the matter-of-fact tones of a woman who does as she pleases with her life. “I have already taken steps in the matter.”

“How so?”

“When I received your note yesterday, it worried me. Even though I could not place Mrs. Tupper in my memory, it worried me exceedingly. So bethinking me of a rather well-known private consulting detective, I sent for him this morning. He should be here any moment now.”

It was as if invisible hands clutched me by the throat, trying to strangle me. I felt Miss Nightingale watching my reaction, puzzled yet shrewd.

“Who?” I managed to gasp.

“You might as well tell me your name, dear, for I shall find it out eventually. The gentleman will oblige me, I am sure. I shall employ Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

MY
BROTHER
! MIGHT WALK IN
AT ANY MOMENT
! AND if he should find me here—

The kindly reader will please remember that I had been under a great deal of duress, without much rest or sufficient food—but truly, there is no excuse. I should have addressed the problem with logic, reasoning it out. I did not.

I blush to admit that, simply put, I panicked. With a yelp I shot to my feet, possessing no rational plan of action, only a blind fervour to flee the premises; without a word of explanation or farewell I darted around Miss Nightingale’s bed towards the door—

But, quite nimbly, Miss Nightingale threw back her covers and jumped out of the other side of the bed, her plump bare feet below the lace hem of her nightgown engaging the floor as if it were a sprinter’s starting block; in a few swift strides she reached the door before I could do so, and set her back to it.

This remarkable event—an invalid blocking my way—surprised me so much that astonishment trumped my senseless flight and halted me in the middle of the room.

“Of what are you so frightened?” Florence Nightingale asked.

At the same time I blurted, “What are you doing in a bed if you can walk?”

“Heavens, the impertinence of the younger generation!” But her sweet, low voice did not vary in the slightest. “Return to your chair, dear, and I will endeavour to explain.”

Feeling a bit abashed, I did so.

“When I came home after nearly two years of tremendous exertion in the Crimea,” remarked my hostess, tucking herself back into her customary seat under her covers, “I fell into total collapse, and quite believed I would die.” A sensible enough expectation, as she had been past thirty at the time. “But as the weeks turned to months, indeed, to years, I found myself not only alive, but immersed once more in desperately needed reform, and there was so much important work to be done . . .”