A Monstrous Regiment of Women (21 page)

“What about Miles—” I started to ask, but was interrupted by a loud, meaty voice standing over us.

“Awlright, you,” said the constable, “these benches aren’t put here for you to eat your breakfast on. If you’re not goin’ in to buy a ticket, move along.” Holmes obediently dropped the remainder of his sandwich into an unspeakable pocket, turned and lifted his hat to me (although I was still wearing my mud-encrusted walking gear), and shambled off to his cart. The PC turned his attention on me, and I hastily folded my newspaper around the thick envelope Holmes had slipped onto the bench, put it into my pocket, and joined the queue of early-morning workgoers to buy my ticket.

THIRTEEN

Friday, 14 January

Women have in themselves a tickling and study of vainglory.

—John Chrysostom

«
^
»

At the cost of an apologetic smile and some feeble explanations, I achieved a room at the Vicissitude, and immediately the door was locked behind me, I took out the envelope Holmes had slipped me and spread it out across the bed. To my astonishment, it proved to contain a positive wealth of disparate information concerning the Temple, with snippets about finances interspersed with histories, some of them quite detailed, of a number of members, including Margery Childe.

As I read through it, and decided that Holmes could not possibly have assembled the documents himself, I gradually realised that the most interesting thing of all was not the information itself, but the way it was presented: The writing was that of one individual, distinctly a professional clerk; the ink and the paper were both uniform and fresh; the method behind the collection, although at first glance nonexistent, revealed a devious style of investigation I thought I recognised; and the sorts of information—interviews with chairwomen, the revealing contents of a dustbin, lengthy periods of following key members about—smelt of an investigator with machinations more subtle, and more extensive, than those of the official police.

It appeared that for some reason Holmes’ brother Mycroft, whose title of “accountant” for an unspecified governmental agency referred to more than fiscal matters, had become mildly interested in Margery Childe’s church several months earlier. He had begun to account for her movements, her resources, and the people she came into contact with, and when his brother had appealed for information, it was simply a matter of having a clerk copy the file. It would have taken Holmes and me weeks to duplicate the work here, and inevitably we should have missed things.

My diagnosis of a mild curiosity came not so much from the desultory nature of the information as from the actual gaps, which would never have happened had Mycroft turned his full attention to the question. There was a report of Iris Fitzwarren’s death, for example, but not the details. The full report of the inquest held on Delia Laird’s drowning the previous summer was included, but it only confirmed in greater detail what I had already learned from Veronica. The file contained various unimportant items, such as a mention of Veronica’s flirtation with Socialism her final term at Oxford, but for the most part the information was thought-provoking, even in its incomplete state.

It was in the collection of financial data that Mycroft had dug deepest, and with the most disturbing results.

Delia Laird’s “good family” that Ronnie had referred to was also a wealthy one. They were long-established manufacturers from the Midlands, and Delia herself had inherited a sizeable part of her father’s estate when both her brothers were killed in France. She had left all her money to Margery. There was a great deal of money.

Iris had left less, a matter of ten thousand pounds. And there was a third woman, whose name I had not heard before: Lilian McCarthy. She too was moderately wealthy, she too had died—in a road accident, without witnesses, back in October. It seemed to have been her death that sparked Mycroft’s interest. And she too had left a major part of her possessions to the New Temple in God.

Aside from that trio of suspicious deaths, however, Mycroft had found nothing concrete. There were rumours, for the most part about Margery herself, but none were substantiated and many were absurd, the sorts of wild accusations a figure like Margery Childe would tend to attract. Even Mycroft, who had never met the woman and who possessed an endless depth of suspicion, particularly when it came to females, had clearly discounted the tales of black rituals and witchcraft. She had no criminal record, she was generally well regarded even by people who detested her message, and she seemed to have solid alibis for the days all three women had died. I was interested to see that Ronnie’s information had been correct, that Margery had indeed been married and widowed. In fact, this was the most devious thing Mycroft had been able to find about her: that she did not talk about having had a husband.

The Vicissitude had gone silent as my fellow club members dressed and ate and left for the day. With difficulty, I inserted the sheaf of papers back into the envelope and took it with me down the hall to the bath. I didn’t actually think about what I had read, not with the top of my mind, at any rate. Instead I found myself thinking about Holmes as he had given me his brother’s information, about his mania for privacy and his penchant for disguise. I lay in the bath and visualised him scuttling into one of his bolt-holes as an elderly newsboy and popping out dressed as a nun, into another with a street pedlar’s tray of pencils and stationery and out again with mops and buckets, and I wondered, not for the first time, how one went about establishing even a single bolt-hole, where one might come and go, at odd hours and in odd attire, without exciting comment. One could hardly place an advertisement. In addition, a bolt-hole would lack a cook, and one could not expect to receive mail. The number of guests one could take in were also limited.

My mind wandered through the various and sundry drawbacks of the surreptitious life and, drowsing chin-high in the warm water, I became more and more bogged down in speculation about minor details: What if one needed a garment that was in another bolt-hole? If the building changed hands, did one arrive one evening like a rabbit finding its burrow dug up? And was there any way of rigging a telephone, and what if builders came through the wall in making improvements, or rerouted the electricity and cut one off? It was soporific and pleasant, and it was interrupted by a voice in my inner ear that came with the clarity of a divine pronouncement, the remembrance of the gentle remark made at parting by my solicitor, Mr Arbuthnot senior.

“You are now a very wealthy young lady, Miss Russell, who unfortunately has had little practical preparation for the experience. Please, if there is anything I or my partners can do to assist you, we should consider it an honour. We all had a great deal of respect for your parents.” He had added, with a less official tone to his voice, “I was very fond of my cousin, your mother.”

Precisely at ten o’clock, I was on the telephone to his offices. The haughty secretary immediately gave way to the senior partner.

“Miss Russell, how very good to hear from you,” he asked politely.

“Mr Arbuthnot, I hadn’t intended to disturb you with my enquiries, but you generously offered assistance the other day, and I need some help.”

“Yes, Miss Russell?”

“I need a flat and a maid, and I don’t want to spend days looking and interviewing. It occurred to me that someone in your offices—I shouldn’t want to disturb you personally, but a junior member, even a secretary?—might guide me to some responsible agents.”

“But of course,” he said, relieved that my demands were no more outlandish than this. “Perhaps I might research the matter a bit and telephone you shortly?”

I gave him the number of the telephone I was speaking from, thanked him, and rang off. In ten minutes, the instrument rang, and I was listening to Mr Arbuthnot’s smooth tones.

“Miss Russell, I believe I have just the man for you. His name is Mr Bell. Shall I put him on the line?”

I agreed, thanked him, and his voice gave way to a brisk young East End voice.

“Miss Russell?” he began. “The name’s Freddy Bell. You’re looking for a flat and a maid, Mr Arbuthnot said? Can you give me an idea of precisely what you’ll be wanting, where, and how much you want to spend on it, so I can help you?”

“Yes, certainly. I don’t need anything terribly large, five or six rooms. Plus quarters for servants, of course. The location is important, though. Not Bloomsbury necessarily, but not far away, if you take my meaning.”

He caught it immediately, and my opinion of Gibson, Arbuthnot, Meyer, and Perowne went up a notch.

“A place where you can take anyone, no matter their station, without them feeling out of place, that the thing?”

“Precisely. Impressive, but not depressing.”

“Right you are, miss. And the servants?”

“I had thought a maid who can cook the occasional poached egg.”

“A housekeeper who does hair,” he noted. “And a driver.”

“I prefer to drive myself,” I said firmly.

“For those occasional times when you need a butler, or chauffeur?” he persisted. There was a short silence.

“Are these relatives of yours?” There was a longer silence.

“Miss, I value my position in the firm. I hope to go far. I would not care to jeopardise it for the world.”

“My apologies, Mr Bell. I shall consider it. And keeping in mind the fact that you value your position, I shall open myself up to being taken advantage of and say that at the moment, price matters much less than speed. I may not retain the flat for long, or the servants, but I require a working establishment quickly, practically overnight, in fact, and I realise that I must pay for that. Now, about the flat. Can you recommend an agency?”

“I am your agent, Miss Russell. Mr Arbuthnot asked me to do it for you. I shall make some telephone calls now, and if I might call for you this afternoon, I hope to have some flats to show you by then.”

“So soon? That’s very good. Three o’clock, shall we say? At my club?”

“The Vicissitude, isn’t it? At three o’clock. Until then, Miss Russell.”

What an unlikely conversation. Most “very wealthy young ladies” might have been offended at being fobbed off on the firm’s Cockney, and indeed most partnerships kept a pleasant young man with a school tie for the purpose. Gibson, Arbuthnot, et cetera, was more imaginative than I had thought, and, I slowly realised, my mother’s cousin had trusted me not to be misled by the accent. I looked forward to three o’clock.

The externals, for the moment, I could leave to our Freddy ; Closer to home, I should have to take my own appearance in hand; however, I was not exactly certain where to begin. The elves had only four hands between them, and, too, I did not think their hallmark of subtle quality was precisely what I wanted here. An image a shade more brash perhaps; flagrantly expensive, instead of incidentally so—off-the-rack clothing, but top of the line. I went down to interrogate the concierge and manager, but those earnest and sensible ladies had even less of an idea where that sort of clothing was sold than I did. The other guests, however, were more helpful, and I soon set off to conquer the world of London fashion with a list of names and streets in one hand and a chequebook in the other.

The limitations of time were a disadvantage, but I and the shops struggled through. I arrived back at the Vicissitude, to find the entrance hallway stacked high with dressmakers’ boxes, the concierge’s desk buried under hatboxes, parcels of stockings and silk undergarments spilling into the next room, the corridor lined with boxes of shoes and boots, and the stairs blocked by a small escritoire, a silk carpet, and a lacquer birdcage. (The bird was to be delivered later, to the flat. I did not want it to die of neglect.) A delivery man in green livery was just leaving, and the concierge stood aghast, a large box in her arms which bore the august name of the most expensive furrier I could think of. Her face was pink with astonishment. I don’t suppose anything quite like it had happened to that right-thinking club in its entire history.

“Miss Russell!” she squeaked. “Miss Russell, I really must—I must ask you what this is all about. We haven’t room for these all, and really, for safekeeping…” She waved her hand and nearly dropped the heavy box. ”

“I know, Miss Corcoran, I do truly appreciate the trouble you’ve taken, and I promise to have everything out of the way before dinner.” Freddy Bell would just have to cope. Prove his worth. “But just now I must go and change; I’m flat hunting,” and snatching up a few boxes at random, I fled with them up the stairs, bruising my hip on my new escritoire.

Freddy Bell arrived punctually at three in a Daimler complete with liveried chauffeur. He blinked when he saw me— not perhaps what Mr Arbuthnot had led him to expect—and the club’s concierge blinked when she saw the automobile. I smiled graciously all around and allowed myself to be handed into the car. However, I did not allow young Mr Bell to sit up with the driver; shouting through the window becomes tiresome.

“Miss Russell, good afternoon,” said the young man as he settled himself beside me.

“Mr Bell,” I greeted him.

“I have a list of seven possible flats. If you’d like to look at them, perhaps you might tell me what you like or don’t like about each one. I’ve also set interviews with three maids and two married couples, beginning at seven o’clock at the firm’s offices. Does this meet with your approval?”

“Very much,” I said, and with a tap on the window, we eased sedately out into traffic.

The third flat on the list was ideal. It actually was in Bloomsbury, just off Great Ormond Street, a sleek and spanking-new building built on a piece of land cleared by a bomb from a Zeppelin in 1917. The flat was on the fourth storey, six large rooms and a kitchen. The owners were on an extended tour of the Americas, and they had furnished their possession in the latest brittle style, all angles and tubes, metal and mirrors and unnecessary drama, expanses of fawn carpeting and pale primrose walls and draperies. The bedroom contained a bed the size of a small luxury liner and a plethora of exotic fabrics draped across the walls, windows, and every surface. Perfect—horrible, but perfect.