Cold-Blooded Myrtle Page 15

  I already felt thwarted by the time I dragged myself out of bed, and I hadn’t even started yet. But I knew what my next move ought to be—and knew just as certainly that it was impossible.

  I had to see the Mayor.

  I could well imagine Miss Judson’s response, should I propose such a mission. Indeed, I had rehearsed the entire conversation before falling into a fitful, frustrated sleep that annoyed Peony so much she stalked off to bunk with Cook, who snores and kicks in her sleep. I shall spare you the imaginary details, Dear Reader, but sum it up in one concise word from the Feline Dictionary: No.

  I sulked through breakfast (which, admittedly, perplexed Miss Judson, as she had no idea that we’d been quarreling), and sighed through lessons, until an unexpected turn of events changed the course of the day.

  An imperious banging on our front door summoned the remaining members of the household to the foyer. It sounded like the entire Swinburne Constabulary, and possibly the Queen’s Life Guard (London regiment), had descended upon us. Miss Judson, Cook, Peony, and I exchanged worried glances. A further moment passed, when it seemed like we ought to draw lots to see who got the unhappy duty of answering the door, before Miss Judson took charge and swung it open. It was not the police.

  It was not even Her Majesty.

  It was, in fact, far worse.

  LaRue Spence-Hastings marched in, hair tangled and cheeks aflame. She slammed something down on the secretary. “My father got one of your stupid letters! You have to do something.”

  Against my better judgment, I glanced at the item she’d dropped. Creamy white paper with a deckled edge, folded in half. I had no doubt it would contain two words in blotchy Latin. Frowning, I lifted my eyes to LaRue’s—how had she known about the letters?

  “Caroline told me,” she said impatiently. “She said you know all about who’s sending them, and why.”

  I couldn’t decide whether to thank Caroline the next time I saw her—or strangle her.

  Then again, how had Caroline known? Miss Judson and I were the only ones who’d seen Miss Carmichael’s note. And the Mayor, of course. He could have taken the perfect opportunity to throw us off the scent by sending one to himself, too.

  Miss Judson, Cook, and Peony had tactfully (or cravenly) withdrawn, leaving me alone with LaRue.

  “How many people have handled that?”

  “How should I know? Are you going to tell me there might be fingerprints on it, and I’ve spoiled them for you?”

  I glared back at her. “Yes, actually. And you have.”

  She shook her hair in frustration. Miss Judson would suffer a fit of compassion and let her have her little tantrum. It was all I could do not to pick up the cast-iron planter and add another homicide to the constables’ workload.

  “I’m sure there are other clues you can find, Morbid Myrtle.”

  “I thought you wanted my help.”

  “I don’t want it,” she snapped. “But I need it, and you have to give it to me. My father’s the Mayor, and your father works for the village.” The so there went unsaid.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” I said—stalling, because I didn’t want LaRue to know how very desperately I wanted to snatch that letter from her and dash up to the schoolroom to examine it properly. Did it match the others? Was there some way to trace its origin? “Your father’s role is entirely ceremonial, and you know it. Stop putting on airs.”

  “You first,” she snapped.

  “Fine.” I held the door open for her. “I’ll have a look and return it when I’m done.”

  “I can’t leave it here! Father doesn’t know I took it. My mother’s making arrangements for the Christmas Ball. I have to bring it back before they notice I’ve gone. Can’t you do—whatever you do now?”

  Not very well with you watching. With a grunt of frustration, I turned my back on LaRue and headed for the schoolroom. A satisfyingly long moment later, she followed. I swallowed my private smile.

  It was really too bad I didn’t have more morbid things on display up here. I would have to consult Miss Judson (or Dr. Munjal) about ordering an articulated skeleton. I should like to see how LaRue handled that.

  Not that I ever planned to have her back again.

  “Stand in the corner,” I commanded, all at once pleased to have her at my mercy and in my debt. If I hadn’t been so concerned about the matter at hand, perhaps I could have figured out how to use the moment to my advantage. I placed the letter on the workbench and looked at it.

  “Aren’t you going to do something? You’re just staring at it! I’ve done that already.”

  It was a good thing every item in the schoolroom was too precious to throw at someone. “I am performing an initial visual examination.” I forced professional patience into my voice. “You might have missed something.”

  Arms crossed over her chest, she said, “I doubt it. It has a Swinburne postmark, it was mailed yesterday from a High Street postbox, and the writer was obviously a woman.” Her voice was smug.

  I withheld my sigh. She’d done well, actually. “What about the paper?”

  “Cheap.”

  “Why do you need me, then?”

  Exasperated, she said, “To tell me who wrote it, of course!”

  I slipped the paper from its (cheap) envelope. “I don’t have a crystal ball.”‡ The ink from the address had bled through onto the page inside. As expected, the two words stood stark and lonely on the creamy paper: Quæstio repetundarum.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s from Roman law,” I said. “A court to try government officials for wrongdoings.”

  “My father hasn’t done anything wrong! He hasn’t had the job long enough.”

  I thought she was probably right, at that. “We think this has to do with something he was inv—something that happened when he was at college. The other victims—” I winced. “Mr. Leighton was their professor at Schofield College. Nora Carmichael, your father, my mum . . .”

  She was nodding slowly. “Caroline’s dad. Go on,” she urged. “What else can you tell?”

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. Slowly, I retrieved Nora’s letter and compared the two. On the surface, they seemed to be identical. Very well, I’d look below the surface. I removed the cover from the microscope and adjusted the mirror to catch the light. It was like showing the letter to Mum, in a way, and getting her thoughts on the subject. She wasn’t here to ask, but her microscope was, and that was a connection.

  LaRue was silent as I studied the paper, its grainy texture turning to a mass of intertwined threads beneath the lens, the ink thick and dark and feathered at the edges. I adjusted the focus, falling deeper into the image, trying to focus my thoughts as well.

  As I shifted the sample, I Observed areas of uneven coloration to the paper. I carefully withdrew the sheet from the microscope and held it up to the light. Barely discernible, if I tilted the page first one way, then another, was a faint, small watermark. “It’s from the college,” I said. “Look here.” The watermark showed the Campanile inside a circle, like a seal. I held Nora’s up for comparison. They were the same.

  “So?” LaRue was unimpressed.

  “So this paper must have been made before Olive Blackwell disappeared. They don’t use the Campanile as their watermark anymore.” Too much scandal, no doubt. “Now it’s just a shield and a lamp.”

  “Old paper? What does that tell us?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “Do you really think it could be her? That Blackwell girl, back from the dead?”

  “Afraid of ghosts, LaRue?”

  “Of course not. I am afraid of murderers who lurk about threatening innocent people with silly models and then kill them in public outside my house!”

  “Somebody doesn’t think your father is all that innocent.”

  LaRue glared at me from hot, damp eyes. “He’s a good man,” she insisted.
“He didn’t kill that girl, no matter what that reporter says. I know he didn’t.”

  “What about Mr. Leighton? Or Nora Carmichael?”

  “I wouldn’t make many more accusations like that, Morbid Myrtle,” she said. “Or you’ll find out just how ceremonial my father’s position really is.”

  Without awaiting my rebuttal, LaRue left the schoolroom and headed downstairs. “Get your coat. I have a cab.”

  I scurried after. “Uh—where are we going?”

  “To get some answers. I can see I have to do everything myself.” And she marched off my front stoop, fairly dragging me along with her.

  Some moments later, I had cause to wonder if this wasn’t another of LaRue’s hilarious pranks, like the time she’d locked me in Dr. Munjal’s morgue. Although, I reflected, that had ended up being a singularly effective point in that Investigation. Not that I was going to tell her as much.

  I reconsidered her threats in a new light. Was it possible LaRue knew something, some incriminating fact about her father, and was trying to scare me off the Investigation? It seemed unlikely, and yet—

  “What?” she snapped, making me realize I’d been staring at her.

  “Do you know anything about the Saturnalia Chalice?”

  “That old cup thing at the museum?”

  “It was a great find,” I said. “It helped make your father’s reputation.” As I said that, though, I began to wonder. Exactly how had it done that? Seeing how it had helped Nora was obvious—she’d become a famous Egyptologist. But being Mayor of Swinburne was about as far from an archæological dig as you could get.

  LaRue gave an exaggerated sigh. “I know. Mum’s always on about it—all the honors he received after the find, the scholarships and whatever. He was first in his class, as I’m sure you know, and immediately got a Civil Service post when he graduated. I think the thing’s ghastly—I mean, it isn’t even gold—but what can you do?”

  That didn’t tell me much, and I had no chance to ask more, for we’d arrived at the Munjals’ house. Hobbes was outside, fixing more greenery in place, under the direction of Mrs. Munjal. It was as if draping the house in as much Christmas as possible would help keep out the spectre of Olive Blackwell and the scandal her disappearance had brought—and could still bring down—on her family. I felt the urge to run out and reassure her that Miss Judson and I were close to figuring it all out. But of course we weren’t, and besides, LaRue didn’t give me a chance. She hopped out of the coach and slammed the door in my face.

  “Stay here,” she snapped—although whether to me or the driver (or possibly even the horse), it was not clear. A moment later, she returned with Caroline in tow. Caroline looked half sick with apprehension.

  “I told Myrtle you told me everything,” LaRue said. She’d used this tactic before, pitting me and Caroline against each other when we were smaller. It generally worked.

  “But I don’t know everything,” Caroline protested.

  “Just where are you taking us?” I asked. That came out sounding like a character in a penny dreadful.

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” LaRue said. “We’re going to see those Blackwell people, to tell them to stop spreading such awful lies about our parents.”

  * an overblown name for a walk taken for no logical purpose

  † a metaphor. Plutarch offers excruciating details of Brutus’s death by this favored Roman method, which sounds thoroughly impractical.

  ‡ I did, in fact. Miss Judson and I had attempted to rig a Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder for meteorological study, which met with only limited success.

  16

  Boar’s Head Revisited

  The tradition of serving a boar’s head at Christmas dates back to the Middle Ages, with a legendary encounter between an Oxford underclassman, a wild boar, and a volume of Aristotle. The specifics of the incident are gruesome and improbable, but suffice it to say the boar did not come out on top, the student no doubt aced his Greek examinations that quarter, and the Aristotle was retired. Permanently. What this has to do with Christmas, however, is anybody’s guess. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  Half an hour later, we disembarked from the cab at the edge of the Schofield College commons. The Reverend Blackwell lived in a flat for retired professors on the college grounds, according to the address provided thoughtfully by the old Schofield Daily article. Inside, the building was musty and old-smelling, with bare stone walls and damp seeping from everything.

  A tall, narrow woman, all sharp grey angles, answered our knock, her hair wrenched back into a knot whose sole purpose appeared to be torturing the wearer, like a form of penance.

  “We’re here to see the Reverend Mr. Blackwell.” LaRue fished in her reticule for a card. “I’m Miss Spence-Hastings, and these are Miss Munjal and Miss Hardcastle.”

  “You may have five minutes in the parlor, and then a cup of tea apiece. He does not care for ‘Little Town of Bethlehem,’ if you please.”

  “We’re not carolers, ma’am.”

  “Miss!” she cried, voice sharp and cutting as the rest of her. “I am Miss Blackwell, the Reverend’s daughter.”

  Caroline and I exchanged Looks of surprise. Was it this easy? Olive had really just come on along home one day? But no—this Miss Blackwell was much older than the Mayor and Dr. Munjal and the rest of Hadrian’s Guard. “Olive?” I hazarded anyway.

  Her lips thinned to a knife blade. “Of course not. I am Damaris.” She turned on her heel and stalked into the flat, disappearing into the kitchen, skirts swishing like the ghost of a wind.

  I’d expected the Blackwells’ tiny flat to be a spare, prisonlike cell, such as a monk might inhabit. But we found ourselves in a cluttered parlor with a roaring fire, beside which four stockings hung in wait. A towering Christmas tree swallowed up the corner, dwarfing a stack of wrapped presents as tall as I was. Only when I looked closer did I realize they were all faded, their corners torn, the wrapping shabby.

  “Like Miss Havisham,”* LaRue muttered, edging me backward into a framed picture, which clunked against the plaster and woke a sleeping crow on a perch.

  “Iniquity! The Sinners shall burn!” it screeched.

  “Shut it, Pontius.” Another voice croaked out of the shadows, from a bundle of sticks that turned out to be an elderly gentleman under a lap robe. His spiky silver eyebrows looked like they would reach out and grab you at the slightest infraction. A skeletal hand waved us in. “How much do you want?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re not students, and you’re never carolers, and Damaris hasn’t any friends, so you must be collecting for charity. What is it this time? Homeless dogs? Wayward girls? War widows?”

  “Um, no, sir. We’re not here for a donation . . .” LaRue’s voice wound down as she took in the cramped space with its whistling draft and dead Christmas tree. Caroline apparently felt the same, gazing at the pictures and bric-a-brac of the Blackwells’ very own Christmas Display. She approached the tree to peer at the packages wrapped beneath.

  “Don’t touch those!” Mr. Blackwell cried, and the bird shrilled in echo. “Those are Olive’s! She’ll want them when she comes home.”

  Caroline snatched her hand back and stared at me in alarm.

  I tried to rescue both Caroline and the interview. “That’s what we’ve come to see you about, sir. Have—have you heard from Olive lately?”

  Instantly, the old man’s face took on a secretive twist. “Wouldn’t you like to know, little Miss Munjal and Spence-Hastings! Oh, yes—don’t think I didn’t hear your names when Damaris let you in.” He wheeled on me. “You look familiar, too.”

  For some reason, this made me bolder. “Perhaps my mum? Jemima Bell?”

  The name seemed to mean nothing to him, and I swallowed my disappointment. Perhaps that was a good thing. Maybe he only remembered those who’d wished Olive ill, and this was further proof that Mum had been her friend,
that she’d helped her. I pulled the note I’d found in the museum from my satchel, signaling LaRue to hand hers over, too. “Sir, do these look familiar? Could this be Olive’s handwriting?”

  He took the notes from me with his trembling, clawlike fingers—and tossed them into the fireplace.

  LaRue and I let out matching cries, but the damage was done. The notes vanished into cinders and ash. Miss Judson was right—I ought to have turned Nora’s over to the police immediately. Now it was gone forever, and it was all my fault. “That was evidence,” I said, voice small.

  “Bah,” he said. “It’s rubbish.”

  I fought for composure. “Was it her handwriting?”

  “Are you daft? My daughter is dead. How could she send letters to anyone?”

  I stared at him. “But—you said—” I waved a helpless hand at the presents and the tree. “Did you write them?”

  Olive’s father held up his hand, which shook, the fingers curled in on themselves. “Can’t write a word, not since the stroke.” He looked pleased to have beaten me. Was this how his students had felt, facing him down in a lecture hall or examination? Or even Olive, here at home? Maybe she’d fled simply to get away from this terrifying household.

  “Do you know why Olive might have wanted to disappear?”

  He didn’t answer for the longest time, staring into the fire as it cast devilish shadows across his face. “Olive was special, we knew that from the time she was born. The light of her mother’s eye, she was. It all changed when she got older, though. Her mother said it was just high spirits.” He breathed a bitter sigh.

  “What kind of high spirits?” LaRue broke in.

  The flinty look in the old clergyman’s eyes had hardened. “It started with that group of lads. And that other girl—what was her name, now?”

  “Jemima?”

  “What? No—the Carmichael girl, Nora, and that brother of hers. But the whole lot of them were unsavory, for all their money and fancy names. Never managed to make it to chapel on Sunday mornings, always carousing or playing pranks on each other.”