Cold-Blooded Myrtle Read online

  I watched them go, anticipation ripening to anxiety. We were letting Genie venture into the tunnels, armed only with a whistle, even knowing that the killer (who was using said tunnels to strike silently at her victims) had threatened her. Genie might be unconcerned, but she was taking an awful chance.

  The next item Miss Judson produced from her supplies was a sturdy key on a tasseled fob. I thought I recognized it.

  “You have a key to the Leightons’ shop?”

  “Evidently,” Miss Judson replied, strolling down High Street to let us in.

  “But—?” I knew my next question would have no answer, but I asked it anyway. “Why didn’t you say something? Why do you have it?”

  “I promised I’d look after things while Emily was—indisposed,” she said. “She gave it to me when we visited last. It seemed prudent.”

  “It didn’t seem prudent before when we wanted to go through her husband’s papers?”

  Here she looked sheepish. “It might have slipped my mind in the excitement.”

  I tossed up my hands, hitched my bag higher on my shoulder, and hiked after her.

  Leighton’s was shadowy and freezing, not at all the warm and welcoming space we’d always known. Peony promptly disappeared behind the counter, no doubt looking for a neglected tin of pilchards. Miss Judson doffed her gloves, then thought better of it and put them on once more.

  “Everything seems in order,” she Observed. Indeed, the shop was as neat and orderly as it would be on any morning, crocks and tins arranged, labels-out, on every shelf; the Christmas tree in the window still fragrant. Spotting that, Miss Judson was spurred to action, and went to fetch some water for its base, lest Mrs. Leighton return to a wilted tree and dead needles everywhere. I took a moment to Examine the Display window—just in case—but the figurine of Cleopatra still lay in the snow behind the closed baize curtains. I stared down at it; it was like seeing the real Nora Carmichael dead once more, and I fought an irrational urge to cover her up with a hankie.

  One sensible thing accomplished, Miss Judson set the pitcher aside and proposed we begin our search in the cellar. Although she did not seem especially enthusiastic about the prospect, and I felt a small disloyal pang that Genie was not on our crew.

  We lit every lamp we could find in the workshop—the better to locate any secret passages. I am sorry to report, Dear Reader, that they did not immediately leap out at us, declaring their existence via scrapes on the floor or cracks in the brick walls. Or neatly lettered notices announcing secret tunnel entrance: authorized killers only. Miss Judson carried a lantern along every wall, shining it behind shelves, as I did the same.

  After some twenty minutes of thorough study, we turned to each other once more, faces bearing mirrored expressions of defeat.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “It has to be here!”

  “Your theory was most sound,” Miss Judson conceded. “But without proof, I’m not sure what to do next.”

  “Well, keep looking,” I said. “Peony!” Where was that cursedly inquisitive cat when you needed her?

  Miss Judson turned her attention to the cartons stored on the shelves. “Perhaps we’ll find something among the professor’s papers,” she said, without tremendous enthusiasm.

  I had experienced that side of police work on a previous case, and while I do enjoy research, digging through someone’s old records is a thankless task—the very drudgery of Investigation. Not wishing to leave Miss Judson in the lurch, I went to grab a box of my own. But my hand stopped in midair, as I realized something was amiss. Or, more precisely, missing.

  “Those racks were full of boxes when we were here before,” I said. “And there was a footlocker under that shelf.” My pulse skipped. “Did Mrs. Leighton get rid of her husband’s archives?”

  She was frowning now in earnest. “Mrs. Leighton—or someone else.”

  “The police?” I whispered. “The Mayor! He knew she’d have the only evidence that Hadrian’s Guard fabricated the Saturnalia Chalice! He must have cleared everything out when they arrested her.” I groaned, knowing that all of the proof was now probably at the bottom of a sewage canal, or feeding the Mansion House boiler.

  “Maybe they missed something.” It did not seem promising, but Miss Judson was determined to double-check their work, and if they’d been at all negligent, her sharp schoolmistress’s eye would find any undotted i or uncrossed t.

  “You keep looking,” she said. “I’ll make short work of this. The Blakeneys are probably halfway here by now—perhaps they’ll find us.”

  That was a cheering thought, and I allowed it to bolster me upstairs to check on Peony. I could hear her scratching the floorboards even from down here; returning her shop to her with claw marks in the varnish would be a poor way to repay Mrs. Leighton.

  Peony was still behind the counter, where evidently the fish juice had dribbled into the microscopic crack between counter and floorboards. Only it wasn’t so microscopic. That was the same spot where the photo­graph from Cornwall had been jammed. I knelt by Peony, dug my fingers into the panel, and fell back in shock as it popped off easily, tumbling me onto my backside.

  “Brrb?”

  “Miss . . .” I’m not sure I said that aloud, as I was staring breathlessly into a cavity in the wall—a great gaping hole that had simply had the wooden panel fitted in to cover it. What was it for? Did mercantile shops generally need escape hatches? It must be for storage, or maintenance in the crawl space, for pipes, or plumbing, or mousetraps—although Leighton’s had a proper cellar, so this seemed extraneous. I scrambled to recover my lantern, heart thumping loudly in my ears.

  I glanced to Peony first. “Mousetraps?” I hazarded.

  “No,” she said scornfully—and I stuck half my body in, lantern first.

  It was . . . dark.

  The lantern made a warm but largely useless circle of brightness around my arm, and offered little more illumination (literally or figuratively) beyond that. I could not tell if the tunnel went down or outward, or even up. I was about to discover for myself, through the practical experiment of crawling inside, when hands grabbed me by the skirts.

  I let out a shriek and dropped the light, which clattered into darkness (down, and at something of a leftward angle) and disappeared, the flame blowing out.

  “What in the name of sanity are you doing?” Miss Judson had hauled me out, and the look on her face was well past anger, though she fought for composure.

  “I—I found the tunnel?” I said hopefully. “Look!”

  “I can see that.” Her color was returning to normal, blood warming her face once more. She set about brushing off my clothes with a ferocity that made me think she would really like to give me a proper punitive swat or two. “Remind me, what is hanging about your neck at this moment?”

  I put a hand up to find the forgotten whistle. “Oh.”

  “Indeed. Were you attending to my preparatory remarks at all?”

  “But look,” I said again. “I found it!”

  Miss Judson gazed ceilingward for a long moment—I think she was mentally counting to thirty in French. Or perhaps sixty. Or seventy-five. At long last, she dropped to a crouch beside me, as if none of the previous moments had come to pass. “Well,” she acknowledged, “that is extraordinary.” Her fingers came out and brushed the edges of the wooden cabinetry where the panel went. “I wonder if Emily knows this is here.”

  We test-fitted the panel back in place. Were it not for Peony’s ministrations, it would have been easy to overlook the fact that it was removable at all.

  “She might not have. But the killer obviously did.” I chanced a careful glance at my governess, who seemed fully recovered. “We must have a proper look. We’ll need another light.”

  “Which you shall fetch.” Clearly she suspected I would topple headlong into the gap the moment her back was turne
d. Penitently, I retrieved the second lantern, and together we leaned into the space, from a safe, land-bound distance.

  “An experienced mountaineer would have no difficulty with that passage,” Miss Judson judged, “although it doesn’t seem designed for human traffic.”

  From what we could see, it was a smallish, iron-clad chute whose purpose was not immediately apparent. A ring of rivets revealed where two sections had been sealed together. “Laundry?” I posited. “Coal? Flour? Empty tins and rubbish?” I submitted it to a robust sniff, but no odors of refuse greeted me. Just cold and damp and a pervasive sort of rusty age.

  “Wait—go back, shine the light on the right side there again. What is that?”

  That, Dear Reader, was a fleck of something that did not match the rest of the iron-and-darkness interior of the mysterious chute, caught in one of the rivets.

  “I think I can reach it.”

  Miss Judson bit her lip until all color vanished, but ultimately nodded. With the hem of my coat in a talonlike grip, she half lowered me into the passage. I had no trouble reaching my fingers down to the scrap we’d seen.

  “Got it,” I called, and felt Miss Judson pull me out. I sat back and held our discovery up to the light.

  It was a bit of blue wool, like from a nubby jacket.

  Genie Shelley’s jacket.

  “No!” Peony cried mournfully.

  21

  Dux Femina Facti

  Much of the work of readying the home and family for Christmas celebrations seems to fall on the women of the house. Perhaps this is why our Italian neighbors have held on to their ancient goddess Strenia, who comes now in the form of La Befana, to sweep the house clean at Christmastime. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  We sat and stared at each other for an endless moment, neither of us knowing what to make of the discovery. It seemed so improbable, and yet—

  “I told you.” The words bubbled out of me, sticking in my throat. “I said it was her. All along, she’s known far too much about what’s been happening. Facts only the killer would know.”

  And not just facts. It flashed back to me now, belatedly. She also had paper only the killer would have—Genie hadn’t received a threatening letter. She’d been sending them! No wonder she wasn’t worried about it. A hot, sick feeling spread through me, and I felt it creeping up my neck and face. I couldn’t believe how I’d been taken in by her.

  Miss Judson put a hand on my sleeve. “Genie is Mr. Blakeney’s sister,” she said with disbelief. “There must be another explanation.”

  “Good,” I said. “What is it, then?”

  But she was at a loss.

  Slowly, with Peony’s encouragement, we dragged ourselves to our feet, replacing the wooden panel over the hidden passageway. I felt dizzy. What were we going to say when we met up with the Blakeneys in a few minutes? Ordinarily, I would have confronted my suspect with the evidence against her—but I couldn’t do that, not right in front of Mr. Blakeney.

  To my surprise, Genie was not at the rendezvous. Miss Judson gripped my hand fiercely as we approached the tram stand, but Mr. Blakeney raised his arm in salute. He was still wearing the miner’s helmet.

  “Genie’s had to run back to the office. Some sort of new lead on the Mayor,” he said. “Did you have any luck?” He rubbed his hands together eagerly, blowing puffs of steam from his ruddy cheeks.

  Miss Judson and I glanced at each other. “Er—you go first,” I invited.

  He scratched his blond curls under the helmet’s brim. “Well, we didn’t get as far as we’d hoped, unfortunately. It turns out the steam tunnels are well known, and until recently were well traveled. They’ve been locked up to discourage trespassers. We couldn’t get past the gate.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Or skeptical—perhaps Genie had known all along that the tunnels were locked at the Campanile entrance. They snaked all over town, after all, and she could have entered the network from any one of the other entrances.

  “And what about you, Stephen? How’d you make out?”

  Miss Judson—the traitor—let me take this one. “We did find the opening that the—er, that the killer likely used to enter the shop.” I described the hatch and the metal chute we’d discovered.

  “About so wide, you say?” He held his hands in an approximately-body-sized circle, then snapped his fingers. “I’ll bet it’s an old pneumatic postal tube!”

  “Like in Paris?” Father had witnessed this technological marvel on his visit last fall: a splendid system of pressurized tubes that shot messages across the city along air-powered underground lines. “We have those in Swinburne?”

  “I don’t think it was ever finished,” Mr. Blakeney said. “Too expensive. Even the one in London was abandoned. But they started to lay lines for them in places all over England. We had some of the old contracts back at Ambrose and Belgrave.” That was the law firm he’d worked at—Father’s old firm, before he became Prosecuting Solicitor. “Decades ago, folks thought they’d be the wave of the future—pneumatic subways, pneumatic streetcars. There were a lot more of them built than you’d think, still lurking about here and there.”

  “But a person couldn’t hide in them,” Miss Judson said. “You’d suffocate.”

  “Not necessarily.” Mr. Blakeney was warming to a subject I’d had no idea interested him. “The systems use a blast of air, not a vacuum, and there were all sorts of designs proposed—everything from tiny ones just for telegrams, to some large enough for human travel.”

  Peony was looking skeptical, so he added, “I even heard they once sent a live cat through a network, with no ill effects.”

  “No.” She apparently did not find this evidence convincing.

  Seeing Miss Judson and me staring at him, Mr. Blakeney shrugged. “I thought about going into engineering. Somehow the law seemed less dangerous.” He tapped the mining helmet.

  Olive’s escape was seeming more probable—and hazardous—by the moment. “What happened to her, though? Where did she go? Why didn’t she ever contact anybody? Why didn’t she meet up with David?”

  “We might never know,” Miss Judson said gently.

  Well, not without a thorough Investigation of the entire tunnel system to look for clues, we wouldn’t. But I only grumbled that privately to myself. “Her family might know something,” I said—without much hope. My chances of getting helpful answers from the terrifying Blackwells were even smaller than my chances of getting a proper look inside the tunnels, especially now that Miss Judson had Asphyxia by Pneumatic Misadventure to add to her list of inherent tunnel hazards.

  Mr. Blakeney looked sympathetic. “Genie hasn’t had much luck with them, either.”

  Miss Judson and I shared the same Telepathic revelation. We turned to each other—and then to Mr. Blakeney.

  His blue eyes darted between us. “Stephen, I’ve seen that look on Genie’s face too many times. I’m about to be recruited, aren’t I?”

  “Olive’s father might talk to you,” I said eagerly. “You’re a man, for one thing—he seems very skeptical of Young Ladies of Quality who step out of line. Plus, you’re not a reporter or from the police, and you have a name he won’t recognize!”

  “Er, what’ll I tell him? Who will I say I am?”

  “With your silver tongue,” Miss Judson said, “you’ll have no trouble at all.”

  Trying not to look deflated, Mr. Blakeney said, “Is there anything else?”

  “Nothing now. I have to return Myrtle before Mr. Hardcastle gets suspicious.” She made that sound like I was a key she’d swiped for some nefarious purpose, no one the wiser. “We’ll be in touch,” she finished, vaguely.

  “Oh. Are you sure?” He looked disappointed. “I’ve got the whole afternoon free, you know. And the week.” His habitual merry tone seemed to falter, and I felt doubly sorry for him. He’d already lost one job to a murderer, and now his
sister was a killer, too? The least we could do was give him something useful to do.

  “Maybe he could look into the Chalice for us,” I suggested. I began to wonder if we ought to keep him on retainer—how much would an Investigative Researcher charge? I probably didn’t get enough allowance.

  “Good idea,” Miss Judson said. “Did you tell him what we’d discovered?”

  He held up a hand. “You’d better not,” he said. “You know what Genie’s like. Solicitor-client privilege can’t stand up to an inquisitive twin sister on a story.”

  Miss Judson and I considered this, but she said, “I think everyone will know soon enough. Tell him.”

  I took a deep breath, and said the words aloud. “The Saturnalia Chalice is a fake.”

  I half expected the sky to tumble down atop us all, the way Olive’s and Mr. Leighton’s worlds had collapsed, but nothing happened. The details tumbled out instead, along with all our speculation about the motive behind Olive’s disappearance and the murders. Except—I stopped myself before I could put voice to our new theory of the crime, the one where his sister was busy killing all the members of Hadrian’s Guard, for reasons nobody had figured out yet. Even without that part, Mr. Blakeney’s blue eyes grew wider and wider, until he gave a long, clear whistle.

  “How did the museum take the news? Ah,” he said, understanding instantly. “I’ll be discreet, then, shall I?” He touched the side of his nose with his index finger. “Very well, I accept the mission. How shall I reveal my findings to you?”

  Before Miss Judson could answer, I jumped in. “We could meet at that coffeehouse to compare notes. The day after tomorrow?” It seemed like an eternity, but we had to give Mr. Blakeney time to produce some results. And it would give us forty-eight hours to figure out how to explain Genie’s involvement to him, before we had her arrested. Again.

  “That will suffice,” Miss Judson said. “And Mr. Blakeney—”

  He waited, attentive. “Yes?”