Mystery & Mayhem. Julia Golding

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of tucking a crocus into his lapel is also gaining regard.

      There was no mention of young Miss Emily Black’s contribution.

      ‘Or the way she wears her stockings all wrinkly about the ankle and her hair in knots,’ Mary the housemaid said, finding Emily gloomily scouring the back pages. ‘Fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be, miss. Fame brings trouble. You’re better off out of it.’

      Emily supposed so. Though it seemed to bring a lot of other things too.

      Lady Tanqueray’s favourite Parisian tailor made Lord Copperbole a new green brocade coat – ‘At no charge!’ said her father. ‘Can you imagine? And you know Basil; he is fond of a tailor.’

      Mr Black found himself invited to the Royal Society – not to join, of course, but to dine, once.

      But after the Case of the Lost Prince (who happily really was lost, not dead, and thanks to Emily soon found again, in a coal cellar) mere fame changed into true regard.

      Lord Copperbole and Mr Black were summoned to the palace, and each anointed with a new title: DBE, Detective of the British Empire.

      There is no crime they cannot solve, the papers declared. LONDON IS SAFE.

      Emily felt torn in two. One portion of her blazed with envy. Her second self glowed with secret pride.

      Until one day, everything changed.

      ‘Dearest Emily,’ said her father, ‘we are quite preoccupied, Lord Basil and I, with our work for Her Majesty. I know you have always enjoyed playing our little chaperone, and since your poor mother – rest her soul – was lost to us, I have adored having you by my side. But the scene of the crime is no place for a child.’

      ‘And the daughter of the Queen’s Detective should be an accomplished young lady,’ added Lord Copperbole, lingering at the looking glass to tweak the pointy collar of his new green coat. ‘A young lady’s most becoming delicate qualities are not to be acquired in a laboratory, my dear.’

      ‘But, Father,’ protested Emily, ‘we have work to do! Mysteries to solve! Legs to sit on, puzzle boxes to unpuzzle . . .’

      You need me, she meant.

      And – she had plenty of qualities already. She had learnt to read at four and a half from Darwin’s Origin of Species (she liked the part about tortoises) and ever since had consumed a new book daily, sitting on the kitchen stove to ensure a warm bottom and a ready supply of toast. She knew an Erlenmeyer flask from a retort. She was a bit good at solving crimes, even if no one else noticed.

      Mr Black took her hands in his. ‘The former Lord Copperbole – Basil’s father – was good enough to provide me my education. Now my dear friend has offered to provide for you. You are to go to Lord Basil’s house in the country. He has appointed a governess for you. You’ll hardly have time to miss me, I promise!’

      Lord Copperbole’s house was in Sussex, surrounded by rolling green hills and a lingering unmentionable smell relating to cows. It was very grand and only slightly damp. Emily had her own room and schoolroom, the run of the library (which was happily stuffed with every modern work relating to science and its principles, and a less interesting selection of magazines about hair), a stable of horses should she wish to ride, a cook to prepare all her meals, and a dog, who she called Wilfrid, because Pashmina was a silly name for a spaniel. None of which helped her heart from squeezing tight in her chest at the thought of her father, hurrying after Lord Weasel, or alone in his laboratory. Mary was bound to have forgotten to fill up the fire bucket again.

      Emily resolved to make the best of it.

      ‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ she said to the governess, with her very warmest smile. ‘I love learning. Especially chemistry, and botany, and mathematics.’

      ‘We will study the pianoforte, conversational French and watercolour painting,’ said Miss Hethersmith, who wore a bun, and spectacles, and a mouse-like expression.

      ‘Of course we will,’ said Emily brightly.

      And she proceeded to spend her time at the piano, or the easel, or with her French text on her knee.

      ‘Oh yes, sir, she has been a most attentive student,’ Miss Hethersmith assured Mr Black, when he and Lord Copperbole visited on Friday evening.

      It was not a lie. She had indeed been attentive: to the pamphlet on poisons tucked into her French vocabulary; to the careful detail in her watercolour portrait of the human anatomy and its vulnerabilities to violent attack; to the composition of a baroque piano solo, using a substitution code to spell out I AM BORED AND WOULD LIKE TO DO SOME DETECTING. And, of course, to the newspapers, which had begun to report what they were calling the Case of The Deadly Bedchamber, a mystery so bewildering that there was no question who must be called upon; a case so baffling that the police were ‘probably, like, not even going to bother’, according to a source. Copperbole & Black had been summoned at once, and were now investigating the most mysterious murder of Viscountess Lucetta von Fromentin.

      The facts of the case were plain.

      The Queen received Viscountess Fromentin, a widow from Austria, for tea on September 12th. The Viscountess had taken a liking to London on a previous visit, and that day had moved into a small but well-appointed house in Marylebone, which had been decorated to her very exacting instructions: carpeting from Constantinople; blown-glass vases from Venice; an extensive range of Austrian cheeses in the larder.

      She was noted by her lady’s maid, Bertha, to seem especially pleased by the appearance of her bedroom: a comfortable reading chair, an antique grandfather clock, and all decorated in wallpapers, curtains and bedlinens from Paris, in the latest fashionable green.

      (‘I am always rather ahead of the tide,’ said Lord Copperbole, swishing his striped green coat-tails in case they were not noticeable enough.)

      After leaving the palace, the Viscountess dined in a hotel in Kensington on soup and stewed guinea fowl, and consumed a single glass of Medoc which she insisted came from a bottle which no one else would drink; the sommelier recalled pouring it away (with a tragic sigh; it was a very good year) in front of her, to be certain.

      (‘Most curious,’ noted Mr Black. ‘Though the contents are lost I should very much like the bottle, for testing.’)

      Bertha took her a small bottle of soda water as was her habit shortly before ten that night, and noticed the Viscountess looked pale and dishevelled. She later recalled hearing a terrible noise in the night, like the thumping footfalls of some monster. The lady’s maid also swore she had heard the bedroom’s grandfather clock strike thirteen. And then she had gone back to bed, because that was scary.

      The following morning, Bertha found herself unable to enter her mistress’s room: the Viscountess had locked the door from inside, and the golden key was still wedged into the keyhole. Her knock received no answer. The windows, their green Parisian curtains still drawn, were bolted shut on the inside.

      Fearing her mistress had been taken ill – or worse – the lady’s maid roused the cook, who roused the underbutler, and they hurled themselves at the locked door until it gave way.

      What they saw then was quite impossible.

      On the bare floorboards beneath the grandfather clock was СКАЧАТЬ