Cold-Blooded Myrtle Read online

  Nanette found her voice. “What do you think now?”

  * Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, 1764, a romance about haunted castles, cursed families, and Italian noblemen

  †Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794, another romance about haunted castles, cursed families, and more Italian noblemen

  ‡Nanette was far cleverer than this account makes her appear—it would have been scientifically improbable for her not to be, with Dr. and Mrs. Munjal as parents—but she had devoted her mental energies to ladylike pursuits, not academic rigors. She played the piano and sang, and did splendid needlework. And her deportment was flawless. If I ever did decide to improve my Young Lady of Quality skills, I should apprentice myself to Nanette Munjal. She made Caroline and me look like a couple of lawless street ruffians.

  9

  Christmas Cards

  Of all the flavors and spices we associate with the holiday season, cinnamon, nutmeg, peppermint, &c, the queen of them all must be the clove, whose pungent oils pair so readily with everything from citrus to dairy to meats. This unprepossessing woody spice is in fact the dried flower bud of a myrtle tree. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  We spent the rest of that afternoon not shopping (mission to select Miss Judson’s present failed yet again), but at the police station. The other girls convinced me that delivering the news of the latest vandalism directly to Dr. Munjal would be preferable to announcing it to the general constabulary. He received it gravely, betraying no thoughts, theories, or emotions about the incident, let alone the rest of the case, and it took every dram* of my Exceptional Forbearance not to pester him to share more.

  But Caroline and Nanette were diffident and obedient, not demanding to see his paperwork or insisting he call in reinforcements, and I did not wish to get them in (even more) trouble. Dr. Munjal often indulged my interest in his work—but now, sitting in his tidy, official office at the police station, beside his proper, pretty, and ladylike daughters, I felt like Morbid Myrtle more than ever. I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t chew on my fingers, and didn’t say anything.

  After we—by which I mean Nanette—told him about the Display, Dr. Munjal held the three of us in a heavy gaze and said, “Wait here,” in tones that indicated we were not to move, twitch, or even breathe until he returned.

  “He must be going to inform Inspector Hardy,” I said.

  Nanette and Caroline exchanged nervous glances, but my restless eyes wandered about the office. It had grim green walls hung with Dr. Munjal’s medical degrees and framed photographs of Her Majesty and Mr. Gladstone. A new one had been added since last I’d been here—Mayor Spence-Hastings. What sort of hold did he have over Dr. Munjal? From what Nanette had told us, it seemed more than likely that Henry Spence-Hastings was one of the people in the Campanile the night Olive disappeared. Was Vikram Munjal another, contrary to what he’d told Father?

  The desk was littered with papers, and I swear I wasn’t snooping, Dear Reader, much less Investigating—but I know how to read, and that isn’t something you can just stop yourself from doing. Among the official documents was a folded sheet of creamy letter paper with a deckled edge, and on that creamy paper, a scrawl of bold inky handwriting. In Latin.

  Before I quite realized what I was up to, I slid from my seat and crept to the desk, where I used a pen to tease the page from beneath the other papers.

  “What are you doing?” Caroline whispered.

  “What’s this?” I beckoned them over. Nanette refused to budge, but Caroline, glancing furtively over her shoulder, tiptoed to join me. We could not have looked more suspicious if they’d sketched us for the front page of Illustrated Police News dressed as bandits in black masks.

  Caroline studied the note, sounding out the Latin words. “Quæstio Repetundarum. What does that mean?”

  For some reason, we looked to Nanette, who shook her head in bewilderment, then waved us back to our seats so we could be timid little church mice when Dr. Munjal returned.

  He regarded us again with grim and weary eyes. “I’ve dispatched a constable to the shop,” he said. “And am now dispatching the three of you back home. I don’t suppose I need to tell you not to say anything to your mother.”

  I assumed the injunction did not apply to Father and Miss Judson, who also took the news with perplexity. Father promised to relay the police report to us as soon as it came in—but the newspapers beat him to it.

  Olive Blackwell Strikes Again! greeted us at breakfast the next morning, along with an Artist’s Rendering of the miniature Cleopatra splayed on her rug in the street.

  Father folded the newspaper crossly—which I had not realized was possible, until I witnessed his overly crisp snapping of the pages, the tense pinch of the crease, before he slapped it to the tablecloth. I was afraid to draw it toward myself—but could not resist a peek at the author’s name. Imogen Shelley. Naturally.

  “Did the police find any signs of a break-in this time?” I inquired. “The vandal must have some way of getting into the shop undetected.”

  Father replied with a growl.

  “And why Cleopatra?” Miss Judson mused. “This whole thing is so mysterious!”

  Father slammed his chair back. “I will not have idle speculation at the breakfast table!” And stormed from the room forthwith.

  Miss Judson and I waited a polite moment, then immediately set about Idly Speculating.

  “What does Quæstio Repetundarum mean?”

  My Latin instructor eyed me over the edge of the newspaper. “I don’t recall that being in the lesson I prepared for you.”

  “It was in a note hidden on Dr. Munjal’s desk.”

  An eyebrow lifted. “Hidden?”

  Impatiently, I waved that aside. “Mrs. Leighton told us they’d received threatening letters in Latin, remember? It must have something to do with this Hadrian’s Guard.” I pushed away from my place at the table.

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Father’s study,” I said. “I need to do some research.”

  This being an Investigative Errand Miss Judson could get behind, she joined me. I stood a long time frowning before the shelves, uncertain where to begin. “Perhaps a dictionary?” she suggested.

  I found that easily, it being a beloved favorite: Lewis & Short’s Latin Dictionary.†

  I knew Quæstio meant “question,” but started there anyway. “‘A seeking.’” I drew my finger down the page, performing a Quæstio of my own: “‘An inquiry.’” My eyes lifted to Miss Judson’s. “An Investigation.”

  “Go on,” she said, voice soft but eager.

  Repetundarum was not quite so easily sussed out, but a few more textbooks later, we’d managed a vague (very vague) understanding of the note’s contents. The Roman court of Quæstio Repetundarum‡ had tried cases of extortion, blackmail, and corruption.

  I scowled. “Is it a blackmail letter, then? Shouldn’t it make some kind of demand?”

  “It’s certainly not much to go on. Presumably whoever sent it felt the recipient would recognize the significance.”

  I sighed. Another question only the dead could answer.

  The dead—or Dr. Munjal. I’d probably sooner get an answer out of Mum or Olive Blackwell.

  It was not all dead ends, however. That afternoon, Cook triumphantly produced some long-lost correspondence from Mum’s “college chum” that had been used to mark a page in Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, another gift from Aunt Helena (her tastes ran toward the self-improving). Cook’s scornful sniff, when revealing where she’d found it, explained why it had stayed hidden so long. Neither Cook nor Mum had had much enthusiasm for Mrs. Beeton’s advice. The letter she’d found was a handmade Christmas card with an engraved desert scene pasted on—camels trailing past ruins of a temple.

  “Egypt?” Miss Judson turned it over and back. “The Holy Land? Maybe that’s meant to be the Magi.”

  “There
are only two of them.” Its envelope was missing, and there was very little other evidence beyond a lazy note scrawled inside:

  Dear Columba, Happy Xmas & Congrats on your Nuptials! Love Nora. P.S. Saw David in Italy. All is well.

  It didn’t tell us much, and there was no date—but it was more than we had before. “Nora and David,” I said aloud.

  Miss Judson’s eyes sparkled. “Nora and David,” she replied.

  We resumed our excavations of Father’s study and retrieved Mum’s thin Schofield College annual.

  An age later, after poring through endless lists of students’ names, I had something. “Carmichael, Mr. David, class of 1874. Carmichael, Miss Nora, sophomore.”

  “Brother and sister?” Miss Judson speculated. “It doesn’t tell us if they were in this secret society, involved in the ritual at the Campanile, or had anything to do with Miss Blackwell’s disappearance.”

  “They’re both listed as reading Classics. That means they were most likely Professor Leighton’s students.” I leafed through. “Same as Mum. And Olive Blackwell.” And just about every other student at the college. I sighed.

  Miss Judson was thoughtful. “Columba is Latin for ‘dove.’ That could well be the sort of private nickname you’d share with the closest members of your secret society. How many does that give us? Five? Who do you suppose was Number Six?”

  Looking at the booklet, names I recognized leaping off nearly every line, I was afraid I knew. I counted them out on my fingers. “Olive. Mum. Nora. David. Mayor Spence-Hastings. And Dr. Munjal.”

  Miss Judson reached out and lowered the book. “That’s rather an inflammatory statement,” she said. “What do you have to back it up?”

  That was the problem—nothing but whispers, hearsay, and supposition.

  As we plotted our next move, I tried to sell Miss Judson on my theory of the crime. Or my prime suspect, at any rate. The Mayor had the opportunity to kill Professor Leighton, and there was no way to prove someone didn’t have access to hemlock. I couldn’t recall if it was one of the regulated poisons you had to sign for,§ but it grew all over the English countryside.

  “Not in December,” she pointed out. “And what is his motive?”

  “Covering up the murder of Olive,” I said, whereupon she turned to me, chalk in hand, face a mask of skepticism.

  “And what was his motive for that?”

  I jabbed my pencil into my paper. “I’m still working on that,” I muttered.

  “Without countenancing that theory,” Miss Judson said, “what next?”

  “We have to go to the carillon concert. Whoever killed Professor Leighton is bound to be there.”

  “And not at the event being held in his honor across town at the museum at the same time? And for which I spent an entire afternoon convincing Aunt Helena to give us her tickets? Kindly explain how you arrived at that conclusion.”

  I only growled faintly, because of course she was right. Either venue was just as likely to attract the killer. Why couldn’t we be in two places at once?

  Miss Judson studied the notice for the museum gala in the paper. “The two events overlap somewhat. It would barely be possible to squeeze them both in—if we’re very efficient about it, and the tram schedule cooperates.”

  The tram schedule cooperated, but nothing else did. By Saturday afternoon, I was still no closer to solving either case, chiefly because Miss Judson had kept me busy with pointless exercises like conjugating Greek verbs and having a hem let down.¶

  “I don’t think Father’s coming,” I said, fidgeting by the window. “We’re going to be late.”

  I cast a doleful look toward the street outside. Father had skipped morris dancing practice to go into the office, an indication of just how much pressure everyone was under to solve Mr. Leighton’s murder.

  “We’ll have to go without him,” Miss Judson said—and I thought I Detected a note of disappointment in her voice. “Alas. I thought he might enjoy an evening off.”

  Back at Schofield College, the Campanile glowed against the cool twilit sky like a lonesome candle. In the commons below, a jumble of people jumbled about a jumble of chairs dotting the snow-covered lawns. I spotted a familiar flash of bright pink among them, and waved to Priscilla. She hastened over, pink-and-white skirts swishing like a walking peppermint stick.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” She clasped her hands with relish. “A concert at a haunted belltower!”

  “It’s not haunted,” I said, but she just winked at me.

  “It will be when it’s in Mabel Castleton and the Secret Society!”

  “Don’t you dare,” Miss Judson said. “We’re already having enough trouble with Imogen Shelley’s version of the tale.”

  Priscilla recognized the name. “She’s a firecracker, isn’t she? Quite notorious—even among sensation writers! I heard she once went undercover as a dockworker to investigate a smuggling ring in Liverpool, and got herself arrested with them. She was in jail for a week before anyone realized she was a woman!”

  “Makes you wonder what she’s doing in Swinburne,” Miss Judson said. “Surely there are bigger stories than our little business here.”

  “Who can resist an unsolved mystery?” Priscilla gestured to the crowd assembled for the concert, and I saw her point.

  “Let’s take our seats.” Miss Judson balked at the scattered chairs. As did everyone else, milling about trying to make sense of the strange seating arrangement.

  “I know I haven’t been in England all that long, but is this quite de rigueur?” said Priscilla. The chairs, a small army of pretty folding deck chairs with cloth seats, were spread in random clusters across the grounds.

  “No,” Miss Judson said, frown growing. “It is not.” With a sharp glance at me, she withdrew her ubiquitous sketchbook—a small model this time, suitable for hiding in a lady’s most impractical bag, the reticule—and swiftly took down the arrangement. I didn’t wait to see her drawing emerge. I had a better idea.

  I dashed off for the Campanile itself. The bells weren’t ringing yet, but I felt their ghostly shudder clanging in my brain.

  I had to get past a gentleman standing in the doorway like a train porter, arms crossed. “No admittance, Miss, until after the concert.”

  “I’m—Miss Leah’s assistant,” I improvised. “I turn her pages.” That sounded vaguely musical, right, Dear Reader?

  “Best get on up then.” With a look of reproach, he cracked open the medieval door.

  It was even darker and stuffier than before, but I pounded my way higher and higher, chest bursting, until I reached the landing for the clavier console. There, one of the small arrow-loop windows overlooked the audience, and I pressed my face to the opening.

  “Myrtle? You came!”

  I whirled back, heart pounding from the climb, from the surprise—and from the scene on the grounds below. Leah stood in the doorway to the clavier room, in her blue fringed dolman. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  Breathless, I couldn’t get the words out. Instead I just pointed.

  Leah slipped past me to peer out the loophole. There wasn’t enough room for both of us to look out at once, but I knew exactly what she would see: the crowd of spectators who’d come to hear the Campanile’s first concert in nearly twenty years, and the chairs in their peculiar haphazard arrangement in the snow. Only they weren’t haphazard at all.

  Viewed from high above, they spelled out O-L-I-V-E.

  *one-eighth of an ounce, or 1.77 grams (or, incidentally, three scruples. Take that as you will.)

  † Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary, Revised, Enlarged, and in Great Part Rewritten, 1879. We typically just called it “The Latin Dictionary.”

  ‡or Quæstio de Repetundis, depending on the syntax

  §the Pharmacy Act of 1868. Hemlock wasn’t named specifically, but technically speakin
g, it should fall under the category of “plant alkaloids.” Laws are often not as specific as one might wish. (“That’s why we have lawyers,” appends Father.)

  ¶I had finally managed to grow an inch, and my best skirt was now too short to be ladylike.

  10

  Saturnalia

  One of Christmas’s ancient forebears was the Roman festival of Saturnalia, several days spent in riotous devotion to Saturn, god of agriculture. Celebrations included feasting, gift-giving, the closing of public offices, and the upending of the normal social order: masters served their slaves, folk abandoned their traditional roles and indulged in licentious behaviors rarely tolerated the rest of the year. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide

  Leah stared at the chairs for a long moment, before turning back. “Well,” she said, twisting the fringe on her sleeve. “I haven’t seen that before.”

  She wasn’t grasping the severity of events. “Someone is trying to threaten you. To stop you from playing, maybe.” Or worse.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. They’re just keeping Olive’s memory alive. This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s a college prank, that’s all.”

  “But Professor Leighton—”

  “That poor man.” Leah’s eyes brimmed with sympathy. “But I’m not scared. Certainly not of Olive’s ghost!” Her light laugh sounded strained. “I’d say this calls for a little Bach.”

  In the clavier room, she flung open a cabinet and whipped out a piece of music. “This wasn’t on the program tonight, but it seems appropriate.” The score was called Toccata & Fugue in D Minor. “Do you want to stay? You really can hear better from down on the grounds.”

  “I don’t think I should leave you—”

  “Nonsense. I’m perfectly safe. There are dozens of people around. What could happen to me?”