The Dark Enquiry (3 page)

“Pity Lord Mortlake doesn’t have one of these,” he said, nodding to the device being fixed to the wall. “I would have been able to speak to you even in the country.”

I silently blessed the fact that the expense of telephones had kept most of our acquaintances from their use. The last thing I needed was Brisbane telephoning the Mortlake country house only to find I had never arrived.

I gave him a brilliant, deceitful smile. “A pity indeed, my love.”

The next morning, I dispatched my trunk and Morag to the country with very specific instructions.

“It will never work,” she warned me. “That Lady Mortlake might have less sense than a rabbit, but even she will notice a missing guest.”

“Not if you do precisely as I have ordered,” I retorted. “It is very simple, really. I have already left a note for my brother that I mean to take the early train. He is a late riser, and by the time he reads the note, the early train will have already departed with you and my trunk. When you arrive at the Mortlake house, it will be far earlier than expected. They will be at sixes and sevens,” I continued. “You have only to request my trunk be sent to my room and explain that I had a headache from the train and wished to walk in the garden before I saw anyone.”

Morag was listening closely, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. But disapproval lurked at the back of her gaze, and I hurried on. “You will say that my headache has not improved, and you will make my excuses tonight at dinner. I am unwell and wish to see no one as I mean to retire early. I have already written a note of apology to Lady Mortlake, which you will send down when the dinner gong is sounded. It explains that I am dreadfully sorry but I am simply too ill to meet with anyone, and that I am quite certain the fresh country air will revive me by breakfast.”

“And when it doesn’t? What then? Shall I tell them you’ve gone for a walk and fallen in the carp pond?” she asked nastily.

I took her firmly by the elbow. “This is not for me,” I hissed at her. “This is for Mr. Brisbane, of whom I need not remind you, you are inordinately fond.”

I struck a nerve there. Morag, with her common ways and her flinty heart, had formed an attachment to Brisbane. Perhaps it was the shared link of Scottish blood—or perhaps it was simply that he was a very easy man to idolize—but Morag adored him. She insisted upon referring to him as the master and had taken it upon herself to do his mending, as well as my own. I had little doubt she liked him more than she did me, and the disloyalty rankled, but only a bit. The truth was she had been somewhat easier to live with since Brisbane had entered our lives. At least she was now occasionally in a tractable mood.

“Very well,” she said, rubbing at her arm. “I will do it, but only for the master. Still, it is a pretty state of affairs when a lady must lie to her own husband.”

She gave me a look of injured reproof and I pushed her. “Do not be absurd. I am not betraying him. But I fear he may be in trouble, and he will not confide in me. I must discover the truth on my own, and then I will be in a position to help him.”

To my astonishment, tears sprang to her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand and before I could prepare myself, she dropped a kiss to my cheek. “Forgive me, my lady. I ought not to have thought you would ever be disloyal to the master.”

“Disloyal!” I scrubbed at my cheek. “Morag, could you possibly have a lower opinion of me?”

“Well, you did mean to sneak about like a common trollop,” she pointed out. “How was I to know you had no plans to meet a lover?”

She adopted an expression of wounded indignation and would have kissed me again, but I waved her off. “Oh, leave it,” I snapped at her. “I should have thought that after so many years together, you would know me better.”

Morag raised her chin with a sniff. “You’ve no call to be so high and mighty with me, my lady. Many a finer lady than you has been tempted from the path of righteousness.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Have you been reading improving tracts again? I told you I will not have Evangelicalism in my house. You are free to practise whatever religion you like, but I will not be preached at like a Sunday mission,” I warned her.

She patted my hand. “I shall pray for you anyway, my lady. I shall ask God to give you a humble heart.”

I suppressed an oath and handed her the note I had prepared for Lady Mortlake. “Take this and do exactly as I have said. I will send further instructions by telegram when I have plotted my next move.”

Morag tucked the note into her sleeve and gave me an exaggerated wink. “I am your man,” she promised. “Where will you be whilst I am pretending to attend you at the Mortlakes’?”

“I shall be staying with Lady Bettiscombe,” I informed her. Portia had agreed to supply me with a bolthole and any other necessities I should require.

“And what shall you give me to ensure I do not relate that information to Mr. Brisbane or Mr. Plum should they ask it of me?”

I squawked at her. “You cannot seriously think you can extort money from me to purchase your silence!”

She gave me a calm, slow-lidded blink. “It might be worth rather a lot to your plans to keep me silent, and I think it is not the job of a lady’s maid to enter into intrigues.”

I smothered a bit of profanity I had learned from Brisbane and rummaged in my reticule. “Five pounds. That is all, and for that, you will persuade everyone—
everyone
—that I am rusticating in the country.”

I brandished the note in front of her, and her eyes lit with avarice. “Oh, yes, my lady! I will make them all believe it, even if I have to lie to the queen herself,” she promised.

“Good.” She reached for the banknote and I held it just out of reach. At the last moment, I tore it sharply in half and gave one of the halves to her.

“What bloody use is this?” she demanded.

“Do not swear,” I told her. “Aunt Hermia would be most disappointed if I told her you still spoke like a guttersnipe.”

“If you don’t want me to swear, don’t steal my bloody money,” she returned bitterly.

I tucked the other half of the note into my reticule.

“You may have the other half when the task is completed to my satisfaction. If you exchange both halves at the bank, they will give you a crisp new banknote in its place,” I informed her. She brightened.

“I suppose that’s all right then,” she conceded. “Mind you don’t lose the other half.”

“Shall I give it to the Tower guards to look after with the Crown Jewels?” I asked.

She waggled a finger at me. “I shall speak to God about that tongue of yours, as well.”

“Do, Morag, I beg you.”

With my maid and my trunk safely dispatched to the country and my web of lies coming along nicely, I took myself off to my sister’s house on foot, approaching through the back garden. I thought to make an unobtrusive entrance, but when I arrived, I found the entire household standing outside, admiring a cow. A man stood at the head, holding its halter and nudging its nose towards a box of hay.

Portia waved me over to where she stood with Jane the Younger and Nanny Stone.

“Isn’t she divine?” Portia crooned.

I sighed. “Yes, she is quite the loveliest baby,” I assured her, although truth be told, she had the rather unformed look of most children that age, and I suspected she would be much handsomer in another year or two.

“Not the baby,” she sniffed. “The cow.”

I turned to where the pretty little Jersey was being brushed as it munched a mouthful of fresh hay. “Yes, delightful. Why, precisely, do you have a cow in London?”

“For the baby, of course. Jane the Younger will require milk in a few months, and I mean to be ready. She cannot have city milk,” she informed me with the lofty air of certainty I had observed in most new mothers. “City milk is poison.”

I said nothing. Portia could be rabid upon the subject of the infant’s health and I had learned the hard way not to offer an opinion on any matter that touched the baby unless it concurred with hers in every particular. In this case, I could not entirely fault her. Adulterated milk had been discovered in some of the best shops, much of it little better than chalky water and full of nasty things. It was difficult to believe that in a city as grand as London we should resort to keeping cows in the garden to feed children, but I suppose the greater evil was that not everyone could afford to do so.

I studied the animal a moment. It was a sound, sturdy-looking beast, with velvety brown eyes and a soft brown coat. It paused occasionally to give a contented moo, and in response, Jane the Younger gurgled.

“Well, congratulations, my dear,” I told her. “You have just acquired the largest pet in the City.”

We both subsided into giggles then, and Portia passed the baby off to Nanny Stone and escorted me to my room for the night. I had brought with me only a carpetbag, but the contents had been carefully selected. Her eyes widened as she watched me extract the garments, a short wig and a set of false whiskers.

“Julia! You cannot possibly go about London dressed like that,” she objected, lifting one garment with her fingertips.

“Leave it be! You will wrinkle it, and I will have you know I am very particular about the state of my collars,” I added with an arch smile.

But Portia refused to see the humour in the situation. “Julia, those are men’s clothes. You cannot wear them.”

“I cannot wear anything else,” I corrected. “If I am to sleuth the streets of London undetected, I can hardly go as myself, nor can I take my carriage. It is recognisable. I must take a hansom at night, and that means I must travel
incognita
.”

“Is it
‘incognita’
if you are disguised as a boy? Perhaps it should be
‘incognito’
?” she wondered aloud.

“Do not be pedantic. I knew this costume would prove useful,” I exulted. “That is why I ordered it made up some weeks ago. I have been waiting for the chance to wear it.”

I had ordered the garments when I had commissioned a new riding habit from Brisbane’s tailor, using an excellent bottle of port as an inducement to his discretion upon the point. He was well-accustomed to ladies ordering their country attire from his establishment, but the request for a city suit and evening costume had thrown him only a little off his mettle. “Ah, for amateur theatricals, no doubt,” he had said with a grave look, and I had smiled widely to convey my agreement.

In a manner of speaking, I was engaging in an amateur theatrical, I told myself. I was certainly pretending to be someone I was not. I had last adopted masculine disguise during my first investigation with Brisbane, and the results had not been entirely satisfactory. But this time, I had ordered the garments cut in a very specific fashion, determined to conceal my feminine form and suggest an altogether more masculine silhouette. And I had taken the precaution of ordering moustaches, a rather slender arrangement fashioned from a lock of my own dark chestnut hair. The moustaches did not match the plain brown wig perfectly, but I was inordinately pleased with the effect, certain that not even Brisbane would be able to penetrate my disguise.

I spent the rest of the day in my room, finding it difficult to settle to anything in particular. I skimmed the newspapers, ate a few chocolates and attempted to read Lady Anne Blunt’s very excellent book,
The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates
. At length, Portia had a tray sent up with dinner, but I found myself far too excited to eat. I rang for the tray to be cleared and applied myself to my disguise. I observed, not for the first time, that gentlemen’s attire was both oddly liberating and strangely constricting. The freedom from corsets was delicious, but I found the tightness of the trousers disconcerting, and when Portia came to pass judgement, she shook her head.

“They are quite fitted,” she pronounced. “You cannot take off the coat at any point, or you will be instantly known for a woman.”

I tugged on the coat. “Better?”

She gestured for me to turn in a slow circle. “Yes, although you must do something about your hands. No one will ever believe those are the hands of a young man.”

I pulled on gloves and took up my hat, striking a pose. “Now?”

Portia pursed her lips. “It will not stand the closest inspection, but since you mean to go out at night, I think it will do. But why did you chose formal evening dress? Surely you do not intend to travel in polite circles?”

I shrugged. “I may have no choice. Everything depends upon where Brisbane is bound. If I am in a plain town suit, I cannot follow, but if I am in evening attire, I might just gain entrée. At worst, I can pretend to be an inebriated young buck on the Town.”

She hesitated. “It seemed a very great joke at first, but I am not at ease. The last time you did this, you took Valerius. Could you not ask one of our brothers to accompany you? Or perhaps Aquinas. He is entirely loyal.”

I nibbled at my lip, catching a few hairs of the moustaches. I plucked them out and wiped them on my trousers. “I cannot ask any of our brothers. They are as peremptory as Brisbane. Although I do wish I had thought of Aquinas,” I admitted. “He would have been the perfect conspirator, but it is too late now. Besides, I am not certain I could afford it,” I added, thinking of the five-pound bribe I had promised Morag.

I tugged the hat lower upon my head and flung a white silk scarf about my neck, just covering my chin. I collected a newspaper in case I grew bored during my surveillance and tipped my hat with a flourish. “Wish me luck.”

Portia linked smallest fingers with me and I was off, slipping out of the house on quiet feet. Too quiet, I reminded myself. Men walked as if they owned the earth, and I should have to walk the same. I slowed my pace, my heels striking hard against the pavement. On the corner, the lamplighter had just scaled his ladder. After a moment’s work, a comforting glow shone from the lamp. I smiled, and the lamplighter touched his cap.

“A cab for you, madam? There’s a hansom just coming now.”

I cursed softly, then called up to him. “What betrayed me?”

He gave me a broad smile. “A gentleman would never smile at a lamplighter. But the effect is not bad. For a moment, you had me quite deceived,” he reassured me.

I sighed and gave him a wave before hailing the hansom. Struck with a sudden inspiration, I adopted a thick French accent to address the driver. It was a point of national pride for Englishmen to consider Frenchmen womanly and effeminate, and it occurred to me that I could manage a far better job of impersonating a Frenchman than an English fellow.

“Where to, me lad?” he asked, but not unkindly. I hesitated. Brisbane could be departing from either our home or the consulting rooms, but I could not be certain which. On a hunch, I called out our home address in Brook Street. Whatever business Brisbane was about, he would most likely have gone home to bathe and dress for the evening and shave for the second time. His beard was far too heavy to permit him to go out for the evening without secondary ablutions.

I jumped lightly into the hansom, beginning to enjoy myself. I instructed the driver that I meant to hire him for the night. He demurred until we settled on an extortionate rate for his services, at which point he was my man. He threw himself into our surveillance with an admirable enthusiasm, holding the hansom at some distance from the house itself, but still near enough I could see the comings and goings. I think he thought me involved in a romantic intrigue, for I heard several mutterings about Continentals and their wicked ways, but I ignored him, preferring to keep a close watch upon my house instead.

And while I watched, I discovered an interesting fact—surveillance was the dullest activity imaginable. I had not been there a quarter of an hour before I was prodding myself awake, but my evening was not in vain. Some half an hour after we arrived, I saw Brisbane emerge, elegantly attired in his customary evening garments of sharp black and white and carrying a black silk scarf. Just as he emerged, another hansom happened by, or perhaps Brisbane had arranged for its arrival, for he stepped directly from the kerb to the carriage without a break in his stride, tucking the scarf over his shirtfront as he moved. I rapped upon the roof of my own carriage to alert the driver, and after a few moments, we followed discreetly behind.

My man was a marvel, for he never permitted Brisbane’s hansom out of his sight, but neither did he draw near enough to bring attention to us. He held the cab at a distance as Brisbane alighted in front of an imposing old house on a respectable if not fashionable street. A lamplighter had been here, as well, and by squinting, I could just make out the sign, marked in imposing letters.
The Spirit Club
.

There came a low whistle from the hansom driver and I put my head through the trap. “I know. Give me a minute.” I banged the trap back down and sat for a moment, thinking furiously. I knew I had encountered the name of this particular club recently, very recently, in fact. I scrabbled through the newspaper until I found the notice I sought.

The Spirit Club hosts the acclaimed French medium, Madame Séraphine for an indefinite engagement. Ladies may consult with Madame during the Ladies’ Séance held every afternoon at four o’clock. Gentlemen will be welcomed for the evening sessions, held at eight and ten o’clock. Places must be secured by prior arrangement.

I ought to have known. When Spiritualism had become fashionable, several dozen such clubs had sprung up around London like so many toadstools after an autumn rain. Usually they were maintained with a tiny staff and a resident medium to hold sessions for paying clients. Depending upon the talents of the particular medium, the sessions might involve a séance or automatic writing or some other sort of spiritual manifestations. Some clients went purely for the purpose of entertainment, viewing the mediums as little better than fortune-tellers. Others went from desperation, and it was sometimes the most surprising people who turned to Spiritualism to give them comfort or answer their questions. Sometimes perfectly rational men of business became so dependent upon their medium of choice that they refused to stir a step with regard to their investments without the advice of the spirits. Engagements could not be announced, children could not be named, houses could not be purchased until the spirits had been consulted.

For my part, I found the entire notion of Spiritualism baffling. It was not so much that I felt it impossible the spirits could revisit this life as I thought it vastly disappointing they should want to. If the afterlife could promise no greater entertainment than visiting a club of clammy-handed strangers, then what pleasure was there to be had in being dead?

I blessed the instinct that had caused me to kit myself out as a man, but puffed a sigh of irritation when I realised that without prior arrangement, I could hardly expect to gain entrée into the club.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I told myself brightly, and I dropped to the pavement. I tossed a substantial amount of money to my driver with instructions to wait some distance farther down the street, then made my way to the Spirit Club. There was no sign of Brisbane, and I realised that he had disappeared as I was tearing through the newspaper for information. I had broken the cardinal rule of surveillance and taken my eyes from my subject, I thought with a stab of annoyance. But the Spirit Club was the only likely destination for him, I decided, and taking the bull firmly by the horns, I rang the bell and waited. After a long moment, an impossibly tall, impossibly thin gentleman opened the door. He had a lugubrious face and a sepulchral manner.

“May I help you?” He gave me a forbidding glance, and I knew instinctively that I should have to put on a very good performance indeed to gain entrance to the club.

I coughed and pitched my voice as low as I could as I adopted an air of
bonhomie
. “Ah,
bonsoir,
my friend. I come to see the great medium—Madame Séraphine!” I cried in my Continental accent. I swept him a low, theatrical bow.

The lugubrious expression did not flicker. “Have you an appointment?”

“Ah, no, alas! I have only just this day arrived from France, you understand.” I smiled a conspiratorial smile, inviting him to smile with me.

Still, the face remained impassively correct. “Have you a card?”

I felt my heart drop into my throat. How I could have been so stupid as to forget such an essential component of a gentleman’s wardrobe was beyond me. I did not deserve to be a detective, I thought bitterly.

The porter noted my dismay and took a step forward as if to usher me from the premises. But I had come too far to be turned back.