The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets (8 page)

A
MIDST A CASCADING CHORUS, UNMISTAKABLY
the sound of broken glass, I plunged. Without my permission my mouth opened to scream.

But before it could do so, my benighted fall ended,
whump
, in something that cushioned the impact quite effectively.

I landed on my feet, buckled to my knees, and stayed that way amidst—what?

Some poufy, airy, springy substance like a giant bustle-pad. Much harder to identify in total darkness than the glass showering around me with a muffled splashing sound.

I tasted some salty, rather sticky liquid in my open mouth. Ordering the latter to close, I applied my sleeve to the former; yes, it hurt a bit. Blood. A shard of glass had cut my face, evidently. I felt some similar cuts, stinging so that I knew they could not be dangerously deep, on my hands.

All in all, however, it seemed to me that I had come off rather well. My bleeding, although upsetting, was not significant. The search-light would not find me here. I had fallen, I realised with a pang of annoyance at myself for being so stupid, through the roof of Mr. Kippersalt’s hothouse, which of course occupied the very top of the building.

Mr. Kippersalt’s? But Flora spoke as if he were dead. Moreover, if she were the origin of the bizarre bouquets, one must deduce that this was
her
hothouse.

As these thoughts arranged themselves in my rather disordered mind, I stayed perfectly still, listening in case someone came running to see what the noise had been about. But I heard nothing except my own pounding heart and panting breath, both gradually calming as nothing alarming happened. After a bit, it seemed safe to think that my pursuers remained on the street, and had not heard breaking glass amidst the hubbub there.

Well. Being in a hothouse, I must have landed in a large plant, blessedly pliant—I could feel its stems bending under me—not a giant bustle-pad at all, although its spidery fronds all around me itched and tickled like so much horsehair.

Still listening for any danger approaching, I explored with my hands, finding nothing within arm’s length anywhere around me except more poufy vegetation. Quite large, this plant, whatever it was, brushing my face whilst my knees rested upon the potting soil in which it grew.

Just as I realised I was now safe—comparatively speaking—my entire personage was seized by a fit of trembling that would not listen to reason, and I felt as if I could no longer remain upright. Allowing myself to slump to the ground, I burrowed between stems that gently yielded to me while the feathery fronds closed overhead. Stretched out at full length, still I found no end to—what? Most perplexing, as if I had somehow fallen into a jungle.

Wherever I was, I quite needed to rest for a few minutes. Just a little while, until my fit of “the shakes” ceased, and then I would get away. Quaking, I lay with both hands on my chest—that is to say, on the hilt of my dagger—and closed my eyes.

“Bloody blue blazes!” someone screamed. Or something of the sort. I think that’s what she said. One hesitates to admit that one could have fallen asleep; indeed, one almost wishes to say that one fainted, except that it could not possibly be true, as I never faint…in any event, I opened my eyes to find myself looking up at the wan light of dawn filtering greenly between a great many delicate fronds of—simple enough to tell what it was now that I could see it. I lay engulfed in bushes and bushes of asparagus.

“My
babies!
” some woman, presumably Flora, was shrieking. “My ’awthorn, my trumpet flowers, my ’arebells, glass everywhere and the cold wind gusting in!”

While ashamed to confess that I’d let myself be taken so off guard, I can at least say that I retained the sense to lie utterly still—except that my fingers tightened around my dagger hilt—and make no sound.

Meanwhile, footfalls pounded up a nearby staircase.

“The villain!” continued the shrieker. “She broke in
’ere
! My ’ot’ouse!”

“Flora, calm yourself.” Pertelote’s weary voice. “She’s long gone.”

Would that it were so.

“Who the ’ell is she?” Indeed such was the profanity with which Flora spoke. “What’s she want with us?”

“I don’t know.” Pertelote sounded unsurprised at her sister’s language, but quite grim as she added, “I wish I did know.”

“I’ll kill ’er! I’ll find ’er and I’ll kill ’er like I killed—”

“Flora!
” The force of Pertelote’s rebuke commanded a halt to such talk, and received it. “You are to kill
no one.
No one ever again.
Do you ’ear me?
”

Flora muttered some sulky reply, inaudible to me.

In heightened tones Pertelote demanded, “What was that?
What ’ave you done with Dr. Watson?
”

“Nuthin. ’Oo said I done anything?” Flora whined like a child who, denied a tantrum, resorts to tears. “Why you got to bark at me after what ’appened to my ’
ot’ouse
?”

“Oh, for the love of mercy, that’s easily remedied. Send for the glazier.” Pertelote sounded exhausted and disgusted. “You’d better not ’ave anything to do with whatever ’appened to Dr. Watson. My breakfast is getting cold.” The sound of heavy steps signalled her departure.

“Thinks she can turn ’er back on me,” Flora said, sniffling, to her “babies,” I suppose. “Breakfast, indeed. I’m not finished, I’m not.” I heard her thump off after her sister, slamming the hothouse door behind her.

Leaving me hidden, yet trapped, in a great deal of asparagus, where once again I started trembling.

Enola, this will not do.

But—the brusque, almost offhand mention of killing, and of Dr. Watson—

Think about that later. Think now how to get out of here.

My shaking increased.

In order to calm myself, as I had done so often before I closed my eyes and envisioned my mother’s face. Of course she was saying, “Enola, you will do quite well on your own.” Blessedly, the thought of her no longer hurt my heart, only warmed it, and stopped my quaking at once, so that I was able again to think clearly, to plan what to do.

It was, after all, not so difficult. I merely sat up amidst the asparagus, removed my boots so that I should be able to walk silently in my stocking feet, then got out of the asparagus, which grew in quite a massive, eight-foot-long galvanised steel container supported above the floor by several sawhorses. This I saw after I had climbed down and stepped softly away. I saw also the hole I had made in the roof by my involuntary entry, and broken glass scattered on asparagus, red hawthorn, white poppies…but I could not spare much attention for the hothouse, because I found myself swaying on my feet—understandably so, I realised. I had not eaten in twenty-four hours. And, reaching into my skirt pockets for the strengthening sugar candies I customarily carried with me, I found none; I had been in too much of a hurry, and had forgotten them.

Confound everything. I needed to make a quick escape, before I keeled over.

Carrying my boots, I padded—as silently as I could, in my wobbly condition—to the hothouse door, where I halted and listened.

As I had hoped, I could hear the two sisters’ quarrelling voices below. As long as they continued to berate one another, I would know where both were. And any servants would no doubt be busy eavesdropping.

Although, on second thought, I doubted there were any servants. If Flora was all that she seemed to be, Pertelote could not risk having “’elp,” lest someone find out too much.

Very quietly I opened the hothouse door, then slipped out and down the stairs.

In a front room somewhere Flora was clamouring, “Ye’ll always take care of me, won’t ye, Sissy? Answer me. Ye’ll always take care of me.”

Except the time the rats ate her face.

Feeling very cold as well as very shaky, I crept down more back stairs, through an empty kitchen, out a back door, and then I ran, tottering, not caring that the stones bruised my feet or that I was fleeing into the worst thug-rookery in London City.

Q
UAINTLY ENOUGH, MY DIRTY AND DISHEVELLED
appearance served to protect me in these low, swarming streets. Last night’s drunkards groaned in the gutters. A girl in a grimy pinafore and not much else huddled in a doorway, her bare feet blue with cold. Boys in shabby shirts and trousers enormously too big for them, rolled up like life-preservers around their twiggy limbs, ran after a well-upholstered woman, begging for pennies. Wives emptied slops, flannel-vested workmen trudged about their business; a man with a push-cart shouted, “’Ot buns, sausage, suet pudding! ’Ot fat pudding fer yer breakfast!” No one paid me any attention as I sat on the kerb of a pavement to put my boots back on, or as I purchased from the street vendor an unspeakably vile sausage at which I gnawed while I limped along. Had the lovely Miss Everseau minced into these brawling thief-ridden streets, she would at once have been set upon, robbed, stripped of her fine clothing and let go naked if at all. But a frowsy-haired, wild-eyed, cut and bruised young woman who looked as if she had been in a fight was not noticed whatsoever.

When I arrived back at my lodging, however—the one on Dr. Watson’s street, being a great deal closer at hand—matters were different. Luckily, the sharp-eyed landlady happened to be out, but I found it necessary to bribe the gawking young girl-of-all-work into silence with a shilling, and a promise of more should she tell her mistress only that I was un-well and required my meals to be brought up to my room. And yet another shilling to provide me with a bath, but say nothing of it.

Thus it was that, by early afternoon, fed, clean, decently clad in a posy-print house-dress, the cut on my face patched with sticking-plaster, I paced my room, fretting.

Pertelote’s voice echoed within my mind:
Flora. You are to kill no one ever again. What ’ave you done with Dr. Watson?

Dear heavens, I needed to find out.

If I were to help Dr. Watson—if he were yet alive!—I desperately needed to know more about Flora. Her last name. Whether she had ever really killed anyone. Whether she had really been committed, and whether Dr. Watson had signed the order, giving her a motive to take revenge upon him. And I needed to find out the exact procedure for having a person put away; I knew only that it required the signatures of a family member and a couple of medical doctors on some papers. With my various questions I needed to go to the borough office, the police, the lunatic asylum, Colney Hatch itself, and investigate—

But with a cut, however superficial, on my face, I could not possibly go as the beautiful Miss Everseau. Even the merest pimple would have kept such a lady in seclusion until it healed.

Yet I had no other disguise available to me here, not even a full veil. And even if I had, it would have been of small help, for only the lovely Miss Everseau, in my experience, could wheedle information out of officialdom.

Until the scratch above my mouth healed—no matter how much I moved about my room, I could not run away from this inexorable fact—until my face healed or I found a suitable disguise for it, I could do nothing.

I could not even leave my lodging when anyone might see me.

Intolerable. What might happen to Dr. Watson in the meantime?

What might already have happened to him?

“Confound everything! This will not
do!
”

Leave Watson to Flora’s dubious mercies for even a day longer? I would never be able to face myself in the mirror again if I did so. Yet I could see no other option, except…

Except to communicate with my brother Sherlock.

And the very thought threw me instantly into a terror. The idea of going to see him was simply out of the question. Even supposing I sent him a message; he was so clever, how easily he might trace it back to me! To judge by the accounts I heard of Sherlock Holmes, anything—my choice of stationery, the colour of my ink, something about my handwriting, a postman’s fingerprint—any trifle might betray me to him.

I simply could not risk it.

Yet I had to.

If I did nothing, and Dr. Watson died…

“Piper, ma’am,” came the timid voice, along with an equally timid knock at my door, of the girl-of-all-work, whom I had sent out for a
Pall Mall Gazette.

“Thank you. Just leave it on the stand, please.”

Once she had departed, I fetched the paper into my room and, still pacing, I scanned it for any further news of Dr. Watson. There was, of course, none. Impatiently tossing the rest of the newspaper away, I turned next to the “agony columns.” As I rather expected—for it had appeared every day since the first time I had seen it—there I found once again “422555 415144423451 334244542351545351 3532513451 35325143 23532551 55531534 3132345

5441143543251331533.”

Deciphered: IVY DESIRE MISTLETOE WHERE WHEN LOVE YOUR CHRYSANTHEMUM.

And still I did not know what to do.

I knew my mother. She was simply not the “love” sort. She would not have sent for me.

Yet how I wished she had. Especially now, when I was so worried about Dr. Watson. Mum would know what to do. I felt sure she would.

If by the tiniest unlikely possibility this message
had
come from her—could I let the chance go by? If she had extended the hand of familial affection to me now, and if I did not respond, would she extend it ever again?

Perhaps she intuited that I might be a trifle upset with her, and she wished to make amends?

Yet my mother—WHERE WHEN—surely Mum, being the one who had to travel into London, from the Gypsies only knew where, would prefer herself to set the time and meeting place?

Might it be that someone did not wish to make me suspicious by naming the wrong sort of place?

While thoughts such as these ran through my mind—circled, rather, like a dog chasing its tail—my eyes went about their own business, scanning onwards into the “agony columns,” where nothing particularly demanded their scrutiny until they happened upon a quite arresting, and mysterious, “personal” all in capital letters:

ALONE PART PART ALONE

Unattributed and unsigned.

ALONE PART PART ALONE

That was all.

I peered at it, bewildered, as I am sure a great many other readers were, by such an enigmatic, anonymous message in such bold print that one could not help but notice it. No cipher either. Plain English. Someone quite wanted to tell someone else something—but what? Part alone? Part from whom? And how otherwise than alone? No difficulty there for me; I was always alone, my very name spelled
alone
backwards—

Then I saw.

ENOLA TRAP TRAP ENOLA

I burst out laughing, enormously relieved. It was a cipher after all, so childishly simple that only a genius such as Mum could have placed it. Thanks to her, I now knew for sure that the IVY DESIRE MISTLETOE message was a canard, undoubtedly originating from my dear brother Sherlock. And I now knew something far more important: My mother might not be motherly in any usual sense of the word, but she did care for me. In her way.

Quite a difficult task, that of assisting my brother to locate Dr. Watson, remained before me, but I felt more able to face it now. Envisioning my mother’s face—with warm affection—I calmed enough to sit down. Fortified in my resolve, I took pencil and a sheaf of foolscap paper in hand.

So. What did I need to communicate to my brother, and what could be left out?

First of all, what exactly did I know as fact?

With my paper in my lap I scrawled:

A most upsetting question.

In between jottings, I doodled, and now I began to draw in earnest. While far from being an artist, I have a knack for drawing people’s faces in an exaggerated sort of way, and I have found that doing so helps me think. I sketched Pertelote. (What was her real name? Had she recognised me outside her window? More questions to which I had no way of finding answers.) I drew Flora as a man complete with nose and goatee, considering that she made a much more satisfactory man than a woman, and it was narrow-minded of Pertelote to think otherwise. But how had Flora come to adopt this disguise?

Then I remembered, and wrote:

Although suffering a certain degree of self-doubt since my theory of Watson and the noseless soldier had proved to be so badly mistaken, still, I began to hypothesise what may have happened between Pertelote, Flora and the missing Mr. Kippersalt. Although attempting to help his wife’s sister at first, Mr. Kippersalt had eventually found Flora unbearable and had her committed to Colney Hatch. (While I sat thinking, I drew Flora as a woman, putting features similar to Pertelote’s on her.) Pertelote, however, whose life had been devoted to Flora since the unfortunate incident of the hungry rats, could not let her sister be locked up for a lunatic, even though Flora arguably was one. Forced to choose between her husband and her sister, she championed the latter, defied her husband and had Flora released from the insane asylum.

Flora then promptly killed Mr. Kippersalt.

This event apparently had not broken Pertelote’s heart. Pertelote had helped conceal the crime by pretending her husband was still alive. Meanwhile she had tried to take control of her sister so that no more such unfortunate incidents would occur. Flora, apparently, still intended to make trouble of some sort…

Of course.

Remembering another snippet of overheard conversation, I made a note:

Flora still held a grudge against Dr. Watson, who had signed the order to have her put away. Surely I had hit upon the truth of the matter.

But—what had she done to him? Killed him?

The thought sent a chill through me, and a pang to my heart. I hesitated to accept it.

Musing, I sketched Flora as I had seen her, nose and face putty torn off. But it was hard—painful, I mean—to depict her that way, poor woman. I imagined two Cockney children, on their own in the most abject poverty while their mother scrubbed some more fortunate woman’s floor—or perhaps their mother was dead already. Or perhaps she had beaten and ceased to love the older child when she had come home to find the younger one’s face eaten off by rats. Or perhaps she had ceased to love the disfigured one. Mother or no mother, growing up that way, so disfigured, was enough to make anyone insane.

Shuddering, I looked down at my drawing to find that in my sympathy, or perhaps in a sort of understanding beyond logic, I was turning Flora to flowers.

I had given her a convolvulus mouth, an upside-down rosebud for a nose, and now I went on to give her poppies for eyes, and for hair, asparagus fronds, of course, wild and stringy. She made quite a bizarre bouquet.

Ye gods in white nightgowns, I was back where I had started.

All of the flowers except the rose—which, upside down, symbolised the opposite of love—had been in the original bouquet I had seen in Mrs. Watson’s parlour.

And I quite understood all of them except the asparagus. What on earth was the meaning of asparagus?

For the matter of that, why did Flora grow so very much asparagus in her hothouse?

For bouquets? She had enough fronds for a thousand. To eat? She could have supplied all of Holywell Street, but I had seen no evidence that any spears had ever been cut—

Spears.

That might be it, I reflected. A spear, a stabbing weapon: hatred or death. Why, the name of the plant itself included the sentiment in a way; a-spear-a-gus—

Spear of Gus.

I sat straight up with a cry, scattering papers left and right, for in that moment of blazing-white electric-search-light illumination I saw it all, I understood everything, seemingly insurmountable difficulties fell away, and I knew exactly what to do.