The Case Of The Peculiar Pink Fan Part 1

THE CASE.

OF THE.

PECULIAR PINK FAN.

AN ENOLA HOLMES MYSTERY.

NANCY SPRINGER.

MAY, 1889.

"IT HAS NOW BEEN MORE THAN EIGHT MONTHS SINCE the girl went missing-"

"The girl has a name, my dear Mycroft," interrupts Sherlock with only a slight edge in his voice, mindful that he is his brother's dinner-guest. Mycroft, an excellent host despite his reclusive ways, has waited until the wood-pigeon pie with currant sauce has been despatched before addressing the unpleasant problem of their youthful sister, Enola Holmes.

"Enola. Nor, alas, did she go missing in any usual sense of the term," adds Sherlock in quieter, almost whimsical tones. "She rebelled, she bolted, and she has actively eluded us."

"But that is not all she has actively done." Grunting as his frontal amplitude gets in his way, Mycroft leans forward and reaches for the cut-gla.s.s decanter.

Aware that Mycroft has something of essence to say, Sherlock waits silently while his older brother refills their gla.s.ses with the excellent beverage that is making this conversation palatable. Both men have loosened their high starched collars and black ties.

Mycroft sips his drink before he continues speaking in his usual ponderous and irritating way. "During that eight-month period of time she has been instrumental in rescuing three missing persons, and in bringing three dangerous criminals to justice."

"I had noticed," Sherlock acknowledges. "What of it?"

"Do you not detect a most alarming pattern in her activities?"

"Not at all. Sheerest happenstance. The case of the Marquess of Basilwether she stumbled across. Lady Cecily Alistair she found while administering charity upon the streets in her guise as a nun. And-"

"And she just happened to be able to identify the kidnapper?"

Sherlock stares down Mycroft's acid comment. "And, as I was going to say, concerning Watson's disappearance, if he were not so publicly linked with me, would she have become involved?"

"You do not know how or why she became involved. You still do not know how she found him."

"No," admits Sherlock Holmes, "I do not." Partially due to the mellowing influence of his brother's well-aged port wine, and partially due to the pa.s.sing of time and certain events that have occurred, thoughts of his runaway sister no longer cause him sharp chagrin and even more keen anxiety. "And it is not the first time she has outwitted me," he says, almost with pride.

"Bah. What good will such tricks and temerity do her when she becomes a woman?"

"Little enough, I suppose. She is a true daughter of our Suffragist mother. But at least for the moment, I no longer fear for her safety. Evidently she is quite able to take care of herself."

Mycroft gestures as if brushing away an irritating insect. "That is not the point. It is the girl's future that is at stake, not her immediate survival. What is to become of her in a few years? No gentleman of any means will wed such an independent young woman who interests herself in criminal activities!"

"She is only fourteen, Mycroft," Sherlock points out patiently. "When she reaches courting age, I doubt she will any longer carry a dagger in her bosom."

Mycroft arches his th.o.r.n.y eyebrows. "You think she will eventually conform to society's expectations? You, who refused to take a degree in any recognised field, instead inventing your own calling and livelihood?"

The world's first and only private consulting detective gestures dismissively. "She is female, my dear Mycroft. The biological imperatives of her s.e.x urge her to nest and procreate. The first stirrings of womanly maturity will impel her-"

"Bah! Balderdash!" Mycroft can no longer restrain his asperity. "You really think our renegade sister will settle down to find herself a husband-"

"Why, what do you think she will do?" retorts Sherlock, a bit stung; the great detective is unaccustomed to the word balderdash as applied to his p.r.o.nouncements. "Perhaps she intends to make a life-long career of finding missing persons and apprehending evildoers?"

"It is possible."

"What, you believe she might set herself up in business? As my compet.i.tion?" Sherlock's annoyance gives way to amus.e.m.e.nt; he begins to chuckle.

Mycroft says quietly, "I would not put it beyond her."

"You'll have her smoking cigars next!" Sherlock Holmes laughs heartily now. "Have you forgotten our sister is just a wayward child? She cannot possibly possess such fixity of purpose. Preposterous, my dear Mycroft, utterly preposterous!"

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

SO FAR, MY ONLY CLIENTS AS "DR. RAGOSTIN, Scientific Perditorian" had been a stout, elderly widow anxious to find her lost lapdog; a frightened lady who could not locate a valuable heart-shaped ruby which had been given to her by her husband; and an army general whose most cherished souvenir of the Crimean War had disappeared, namely, his bullet-riddled leg-bone signed by the field doctor who had amputated it.

Trifles, all. My energies should have been directed towards a far more important objective: to find Mum. I knew my mother was roaming with the Gypsies, and I had promised myself that in the spring I would track her down, not to reproach her or coerce her, only to reunite with my-my amputated family member, so to speak.

Yet here it was May already, I had made no effort at all to search for Mum, and I did not know why except to say that business detained me in London.

Business? A lapdog, a lapidary, and a leg-bone?

But clients were clients, I told myself. It had not, of course, been necessary (or possible) for any of them to meet the ill.u.s.trious (and fict.i.tious) Dr. Ragostin himself. Rather, "Miss Ivy Meshle," his trusted a.s.sistant, had returned the widow's pet, an adorable curly-haired spaniel, to its grateful owner, having taken it back from a notorious Whitechapel dealer in purloined purebred dogs. Similarly, "Miss Meshle" had resolved the affair of the lost jewel simply enough by sending a boy up the linden tree outside the lady's window to look in a magpie's nest. (How easily I could have climbed that tree myself, and how I yearned to do so! But propriety forbade.) As for the general's leg-in-a-box, I was rather tepidly on the trail of it when I chanced to become involved in a far more intriguing and, as it turned out, urgent case.

I blush to confess that the initial encounter took place within a recent establishment on Oxford Street which, while gratefully patronised by gentlewomen who shopped that expensive district, was not mentioned in mixed society: the first London Ladies' Lavatory.

This splendid innovation, tacitly acknowledging that well-bred women no longer spent their days at home within a few steps of their own water-closets, cost a penny to enter-quite worth it, when one needed it, even though the same sum would have given an East End child bread, milk, and grammar-schooling for a day. The cost ensured that the facility was used mostly by females of the upper cla.s.ses, although the occasional working-girl, such as Ivy Meshle in her false curls and cheaply fashionable ready-made clothing, might venture in.

That day, however, I was not disguised as the slightly vulgar Ivy Meshle. Instead, my inquiries having taken me into the neighbourhood of the British Museum-which both of my brothers frequented, to my discomfiture-I was got up as a female scholar, with my unlovely hair in a plain bun and my narrow, sallow face disguised by ebony-rimmed spectacles. These, while minimising my alarming nose, also made me an object rather beneath notice, as no fashionable lady would ever wear gla.s.ses. In a dress of good-quality yet narrow, dark, and untrimmed serge, and a similarly plain dark hat, I sat in the Ladies' Lavatory's comfortably dark brown-leather-and-faux-marble parlour to relax a few moments in grateful certainty that neither Sherlock nor Mycroft was likely to come in there after me.

It had been a fraught day so far-female scholars are not much admired among the male populace of London-but here I attracted no attention; it was quite customary for a patron weary of shopping to rest in the parlour's shadowy plasterwork coolness before venturing again into the dust and heat of the street.

A bell tinkled, the maidservant crossed the lavatory parlour to open the door, and three ladies came in. They pa.s.sed close by me, for I occupied a plush russet settee beside the door. I did not, of course, look up from my newspaper, nor would I have given them any thought if it were not that, from the moment they entered, I sensed something amiss, badly so. A tension amongst them.

I heard silk petticoats rustling as they pa.s.sed, but no other sound. They were not speaking to one another.

Wondering what might be the matter, without moving my head (it would have been bad manners to peer openly) I raised my eyes, although I could tell little enough from my view of their backs.

Two richly dressed matrons, their voluminous skirts trailing, flanked a younger, slimmer female in the very latest Paris fashion-indeed, it was the first time I had seen a bell skirt on an actual person rather than a department-store mannequin. Huge citrine bows poufed and trailed by way of a bustle or train, but the skirt itself, of a deeper yellow-green, was drawn in by hidden tapes as if to simulate a second waist in the neighbourhood of the knees. Beneath this, it spread out again to form a flounced "bell" from under which the girl's feet never peeped; indeed, they hardly stirred her ruffles as she walked, for her skirt limited her stride to perhaps ten inches. I winced, watching her falter along, for-although her slender form did not attain the ideal "hourgla.s.s" figure-to my eye she was a lovely creature; it was as if someone had put a deer in hobbles. Good sense had always sacrificed itself for fashion, of course-hoop skirts, bustles-but this girl, I thought, must utterly be fashion's fool, wearing a dress in which she could barely toddle!

As the trio neared the doorway to the lavatory's inner sanctum, the girl halted.

"Come along, child," commanded one of the older women.

Instead, without a word, the bell-skirted girl seated herself less than gracefully. Indeed, she threw herself, almost falling, into one of the dark leather armchairs across the room from me.

And as her face turned towards me, I very nearly gasped aloud with shock and surprise, for I knew her! I could not be mistaken, for our adventures, the sisterhood I had felt for her, my terror when the garroter had attacked her, all remained indelibly in my memory; the sight of her sensitive, cultured face magnetised me. It was the baronet's daughter, the left-handed lady whom I had once found and rescued-it was the Honourable Cecily Alistair.

But I did not recognise the women with her. Where was Cecily's mother, the lovely Lady Theodora?

As for Lady Cecily: this past winter I had seen her cold, hungry, and dressed in rags, with all the l.u.s.tre gone out of her brilliant eyes, but nothing could have prepared me for the alarm I felt at her appearance now. Her face seemed even more haggard than when I had seen her last, and its expression more distressed. With her jaw clenched and her full lips thinned in defiance, with a glare of wild, desperate rebellion she faced the two matrons towering over her.

"No, indeed, young lady," said one of these in authoritative tones that declared her to be far more than chaperone-grandmama, perhaps, or auntie? "You are coming with us." She grasped the seated girl by one elbow, and the second woman seized the other.

By now I had raised my head, frankly gawking. Luckily, the two dowagers faced away from me, their attention all on the sixteen-year-old girl in the armchair.

In a low voice Lady Cecily replied, "You cannot make me," and she slumped deep in the chair, quite smashing her citrine ornamentations, letting herself sag with her head down so that, if the two women wanted her to stand, they must haul her bodily to her feet. This would have been no small struggle, yet I think they would have done so if it were not for my presence; they glanced around to see who might be watching. Hastily I looked down again at my newspaper, but they were not stupid.

"Well," I heard one of them say in brittle tones, "I suppose we must go by turns."

"Proceed," responded the other. "I will stay with her."

One of them then went into the lavatory proper, and hearing its door swing shut, I glanced up again. The second matron was seating herself upon another armchair, her attention for the moment fixed on the arrangement of her pongee draperies, and in that instant Lady Cecily lifted her head and, like a prisoner mindful of any possible means of escape, looked straight at me.

And recognised me. Even though we had met only once before, the night her kidnapper had nearly killed her, she knew me. Snap, it was as if a whip had cracked, such was the force with which our gazes met, and the speed, for instantly she looked down again, doubtless to hide from her companion the widening of her eyes.

Doing likewise, I wondered whether she remembered my name, which I had so impulsively and unwisely divulged to her: Enola Holmes. I felt sisterhood towards this unhappy genius, a baronet's daughter of dual personality: the left-handed artist who felt the plight of the poor and rendered it in the most extraordinary charcoal drawings, yet who was forced to be the docile right-handed Lady Cecily for society.

But I knew much more of her than she did of me; I could only imagine how much like a dream I, a mystery girl in a black cloak, must have seemed on that perilous night, and her incredulity at seeing me again, now, in daylight. And perhaps her hope that I might once again a.s.sist her, whatever her plight might be.

What might be the matter? Laying my newspaper aside as if I were tired of it, I considered the desperation I had seen in Lady Cecily's dark eyes, the pallor of her gaunt face, the dullness of her golden-brown hair pulled straight back from her forehead beneath a simple hat, a flat straw boater.

When, a moment later, I ventured to look up again, she held a fan.

A most peculiar fan, for it was uniformly candy pink-dreadfully common-and quite mismatched to her lemon ribbons, lime skirt, and creamy kid-leather gloves and boots. Also, while her expensive new skirt was of the finest b.u.t.ter-soft yellow-green surah, her fan was made of merest folded paper glued to plain sticks and edged with ordinary pink-tinted feathers.

Her dowager escort, seated close to her and at an angle to watch her, said peevishly, "I am sure I will never understand why you insist on dragging that awful thing around when you have that nice fan I gave you. Cream silk panne with carved ivory sticks and point-lace overlay; have you forgotten?"

Ignoring her, Cecily opened the pink fan and began to ply it as if to cool her face. I noticed that she used her left hand-significant; she chose to be her true self rather than obeying the demands of propriety. I noticed also that she positioned the fan as a frail sort of barrier between herself and her guardian. Behind its brief concealment her gaze caught mine, and in that moment the fan almost as if by accident tapped her on the forehead.

I understood her signal at once: Caution. We are being watched. The language of fans had been invented by young lovers attempting to court in the presence of chaperones, and while certainly I had never enjoyed a lover-nor did I expect I ever would-in my innocent childhood days at Ferndell Hall, and under the wry tutelage of my mother, I had often been diverted by watching.

Giving no other sign, I sighed as if hot and weary, reached into a large pocket centred under the frontal drapery of my dress, and pulled out my own fan, which I carried not for the sake of elegance or flirtation, but simply to cool my face. My fan was brown cambric, plain but tasteful, and I opened it far enough-more than halfway-to indicate friendship.

Meanwhile, the dowager who had gone into the lavatory emerged, and the other one rose to take her turn. Lady Cecily seized this moment, when their attention was distracted, to send her fan into a frenzied fluttering, clearly a signal of agitation and distress.

I let my fan rest for a moment upon my right cheek. Yes. Telling her that I understood; something was wrong.

"Use your right hand," snapped the dowager who was now seating herself, "and put that silly toy away."

Although she froze motionless, Cecily did not obey.

"Put it away, I said," ordered her-captor? Such seemed to be the role of the dowager.

Lady Cecily said, "No. It amuses me."

"No?" The larger, older woman's tone became dangerous-but then shifted. "Oh, very well, defy me-but only in this." Lowering rather than raising her voice, she spoke on grimly yet so quietly that I could not hear. Stiffly seated-her stout waist corseted to the utmost within her elaborate gown-the dowager kept her profile to me; and whilst outwardly I sat sedately fanning myself, inwardly my every sense had alerted like a hunting dog on point. Studying the woman before me so as to recognise her should I see her again, I realised it would be difficult to tell her from the other one; both had features oddly dainty amidst the breadth and fleshiness of their faces: arched, brittle brows, puppy noses, thin lips. Indeed, both looked so much alike that quite probably they were sisters, perhaps even twins. This one's hair might be greying a bit more than the other's, what I could see of it beneath a magnificent hat so tilted and convoluted that dog-tooth lilies cl.u.s.tered beneath its brim.

"...if it takes all day." Her voice rose slightly as vehemence took hold. "A trousseau you will need, and a trousseau you shall have."

Lady Cecily said, "You cannot make me wear it."

"We shall see. Come along," she said as the other matron emerged from the lavatory, signalling her readiness by lifting her parasol.

Without a word Cecily stood up, but as she did so, she held her fan open in front of her face. Meant to encourage a timid lover, the fan so displayed signalled Approach me. But under the circ.u.mstances, with her great dark eyes flashing a plea to me over its pink-feathered edge, the fan signalled-what?

Do not forsake me.

Help me.

Willingly, I thought, as I tapped my cheek Yes-but how?

Rescue me.

From what?

"Do put that wretched toy in your pocket!"

Cecily only lowered her pink fan to her side as the two dowagers flanked her again and accompanied her towards the door beside which I sat with my fan languidly waving but my mind racing. Cecily held her fan by its string now, twirling it-another signal of danger. Be careful. We are being watched.

She wished for secrecy, then. So I acted abstracted, gazing at an ugly gilt-framed still-life on the far wall as they pa.s.sed me, but all the time planning to follow them, find out where they- Thump, an impact rocked the settee in which I sat, and peripherally I saw a blur of citrine-Lady Cecily-who had tripped over her ridiculous bell skirt, nearly falling into me. Instantly her two scowling escorts scooped her up and hurried her out, all without a word of apology to me.

Had they spared me even a glance, they might have seen as I did: on the settee next to me lay the pink paper fan.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE INSTANT THE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND CECILY and her two redoubtable chaperones, I sprang to my feet, slipping her pink fan along with my own into my pocket. I had to follow her and find out what was the matter in order to help her-but if I trailed her party too closely, I risked being noticed by her formidable chaperones. Therefore, I first jumped upon the settee, where by standing on tiptoe I could just see through the lavatory's high window. The deep-set diamond-shaped window-panes distorted my limited view, but I could make out the threesome progressing towards the cab-stand.