Nettleblack, page 13
Septimus flushed. “Look, this ain’t helping – ”
“It’s really very flattering that you want to play the man for us, but you’re welcome to put your skirts back on whenever you like. Even our poor bumbling bass-baritones wear the trousers better than you!”
That was quite enough of such categoric untruths.
“Division Sergeant?” – and it was me, shaky-voiced, every word a physical thing to push across my tongue. “I – erm – you know best, of course – but – there’s something backstage that – erm – you probably ought to have a look at – I – I might be wrong – and – well – please do correct me – if I am – ”
She stared. Stark and angular on the stage’s edge, knuckles taut about the head’s jawline, her glare furrowed and wrong-footed. I’d overstepped – of course I had – and with the whole company watching us –
“You ain’t wrong,” she declared suddenly. If anything, she sounded a little surprised. “Good idea. And – there you go, cast, Mr. Adelstein’s here!”
Merciless peaches. I flung a tremulous glance past her shoulder, where Gertie Skull pelted up the aisle – Gertie Skull with a herringbone suit at her back, the ruler-perfect hairline and darting yellow eyes of my detectival foe.
“As you were,” Septimus called to them, stiffening out of her startled scrutiny. “I’m taking names, registers and head back to the Div. But first – Henry – backstage! Show me! Right!”
And without another glance at scornful actors, sprinting Divisioners, or (to my infinite relief) scowling detective, she thrust the head into my arms and dashed past the curtains, crunching the parasol underfoot as she went. The company’s stares whipped me into a sprint, clutching the head like a sans-culotte, following her down to the brittle back door – pausing only to stumble into an errant stagehand, and send them into a fit of blue hysterics.
The crowd hadn’t dispersed in the least when we emerged. If anything, it had swelled, heavy with the gruesome news. The nearby houses were seeping light, their windows spliced with silhouettes as the inhabitants craned for a better view. The air was cross-hatched with voices, frightened cries and spluttered incredulities and drawling speculation all tangling together. I wouldn’t have been stunned if the whole of Dallyangle had heard of the head’s appearance by now, heard of it and gasped of it and conjured a story round it over their tea – or, as this surge of people had evidently done, come out to gawp for a sight of it. Septimus was ahead of me, hacking our way through the hordes with the whole box-office register to appendix her notebook, and I had the head in the crook of my arm, masked under my hat. There didn’t seem any decorous way of transporting it, other than getting it away from the seethe of bystanders as quickly as we could manage.
It quite astonishes me, in retrospect, that I could be so briskly cavalier about my grisly burden. I can only surmise that Mordred’s antics with Maggie Sweeting’s finger – or, quite possibly, a week spent reading Life and Limbs – had heightened my capacity for ghoulishness tenfold.
“And there was no blood at all?”
I twisted through the crowd to catch Septimus’s words. “I – erm – not in the chest – ”
“And none backstage either, by the look of it.”
“Well – that back door – ”
“Fair point. Could’ve killed him somewhere else and snuck the head in there. But who is he, that’s the question! Maybe not all the audience could see him. Some of ’em must’ve, though. There’s a box on the side we could check. Close up to the stage – looks like a good view. Anyone in there would’ve had the head and the audience both, clear as you like – ”
“Sept!”
Septimus swung round. There, twisting past a cluster of sweat-hemmed gentlemen in evening-dress – tousled blond curls, greasepaint, the smudged remnants of a skull and crossbones poking out beneath rolled-up shirtsleeves – figs, it was Lorrie, still in his costume! He was hurling questions ahead of him, half-singing them to make sure they survived the distance – “Are you alright? Are you safe? Did you get it?”
Septimus grabbed his arm, shouldered the gentlemen aside and ushered him away down a side-street. The throng hadn’t spread this far, and the sudden space was quite unsettling. The space – and the fact that a ruddy-haired woman in a lavish opera cloak had disentangled herself from the same knot of gentlemen to stalk silently after us, shoulder to shoulder with me. She was evidently far too well-bred to return my startled stare, her brisk little eyes like tiny hooks in Lorrie’s back.
“Lorrie – God’s sake – you, are you alright?”
Lorrie swallowed, wrenched his voice back to the wryness of this morning – albeit none too convincingly. “Well, they stopped the show, didn’t they? There I was, ready to do my bit with the life-preserver, and then I get upstaged by a head.”
She cupped his painted face in her hands. Of course she’d seen through that queasy bravado. “You ain’t hurt?”
“Yes!” He tried for a feeble smile. Beside me, the strange woman sniffed amusedly. “Or – no – y’know what I mean. Sept, I’m fine – why’d I be hurt?”
A crisp nod. “Good. Right. Lorrie – I’ve got to ask – did anyone take that grand-circle box stage left? It’s got the best view for the head – and the cast ain’t exactly being forthcoming with their information – ”
“They did.” He softened to a frown, almost apologetic, lifted a shaking hand to squeeze hers. “Property had that box tonight.”
She froze. “’Course they did. Well, that’s a start – ”
“Sept, don’t. Not again. This is murder you’re talking about.”
“I know that!” she snapped. “I ain’t saying they did it. But they’ll know something. They always do.”
“But – ”
He clearly had more cautionary words simmering on his tongue, but she didn’t give him time to drape her in them. She wrenched her eyes away from him, skewered the woman at my shoulder on a sharp worried look – brusquely inquisitive as ever, for all the expensive weight of that opera-cloak.
“Sorry, ma’am – d’you need our help?”
Lorrie gulped. “Sept – ”
The woman waved a hand to quiet him. Figs, I’d been right – she must have been nobility, and practiced mistress to a fleet of servants, from that gesture alone. Beyond that, there was the heavy rich warmth of her cloak and her gown, the ruby necklace glinting at her throat, the gloves that lapped above the elbow on her arms. Dressed as she was, she would have stuck out like a peacock amongst the homely bulk of the audience. Even the gentlemen she had been with couldn’t match the ostentatious brilliance of her skirts.
Even so. Her ruddy chignon was straggling rather at the ears, whilst Septimus’s hair was as indomitably perfect as it had been since I met her. In that, at least, I took no small degree of comfort.
“No, Lawrence, I ought to explain myself. Doubtless this is the same sister of whom you speak so fawningly.”
The woman stepped past me, closer to the pair of them, her rubies glittering more viciously than ever under the lantern-hook that sprang from the theatre wall. One of her gloved hands curled about Lorrie’s arm, squeezing firmly enough to smudge his false tattoo. “My name is Miltonwaters. Lady Elvira Miltonwaters. I was in attendance at the performance tonight – I am a benefactress of this theatre, you see – you might even say, its principal patron – and I offered Lawrence my assistance upon the mass exodus. The poor boy was all alone, and clearly distressed, as you may well expect! What an ordeal for him – ” – and the glove crawled up his arm, patted his cheek – “ – reaching for a prop and finding such a monstrous substitution!”
Persimmons –
My arms quite gave. The head squelched away across the cobblestones. Not a single one of them appeared to notice.
“Lady Miltonwaters’s been very kind,” Lorrie mumbled, shooting his sister a warning look. Septimus was staring taut-faced at the older woman’s fingers, now drumming lightly on the gooseflesh of her brother’s bare shoulder. “Milady, you’re right – this is my sister – this is Sept – Septimus.”
Another gloved hand snaked out, slipping past Lorrie’s chest to hang open-palmed for a handshake. Septimus ignored it. “Miss Tickering. Your face is peculiarly familiar – and far too comely for those trousers, I might add. I assure you, my dear, there is no need for you to take a man’s name, nor adopt the attire of one. That you support your brother’s talent is distinction enough.”
“It’s Division Sergeant Septimus. Not Miss Tickering. I ain’t Tickering, or Miss anything. And what’s Lorrie’s talent to you?”
Figs – with her brother at stake she was fearless – and with Lady Miltonwaters! Where had she been yesterday, when I needed someone just as undaunted as a guiding example?
The lady’s lip curled. “Division Sergeant?”
“Sept’s in the Dallyangle Division, Milady,” Lorrie blurted, forcing a wary smile. He shifted his shoulder, ever so slightly, but Lady Miltonwaters’s hand moved with it, fingertips still pattering carelessly against his skin. It seemed alarmingly forward of her, especially considering that – if I recalled the blur of today aright – Lorrie was supposedly meant to have a sweetheart. (Unless Lady Miltonwaters was his sweetheart?) “She was one of the first recruits, too!”
“Oh.”
Lady Miltonwaters arched an eyebrow, every sinew of her face sharpening with unconcealed disgust. “That’s why I know you. The impertinent cyclist who nearly damaged my gig. Stuck with the Dallyangle Division that long, have you?”
Lorrie winced. “Milady – ”
“Really, I’m astonished that any woman should choose to spend her days in such a brutish occupation. Division, indeed – division of what? You are not affiliated with the New Police, or the old police, or – or anything, are you? It’s simply you on your own, you and your useless little rabble, as far as I can tell.”
Septimus set her teeth. “The council funds us. And the Div’s proved its worth.”
“Has it? Not to me! Not when it sits back and gawps as a brace of criminals ransack my house!”
“We’re chasing the Sweetings,” Septimus insisted, crimsoning in the lamplight. Her gaze darted to Lorrie, back to Lady Miltonwaters, navy eyes twitching at the edges. “Every other case we’ve had, we’ve been just fine – and this one’ll be the same. The Director’s got it all under control – ”
“The Director! Is that what we’re expected to call your heathenish leader now? What right does an individual like that have to make our town into her personal vivisection? She may have sucked the rest of the council into her farce, but I always knew it was a mere matter of time before she forgot her lines. Dallyangle does not exist to prove true any delusional ideas she might have about women, especially not women of her complexion. I’m sure, Miss Tickering, if you were to think for yourself a moment, you would have to agree with me.”
Lorrie’s fingers spasmed, as if to grab for his sister and hold her back – but Septimus didn’t move, though she was clearly quite starched with fury. Instead, she just flicked her eyes down, skimmed over the train of Lady Miltonwaters’s gown, glanced up again with a steady glare. Her voice, when she spoke, was positively brittle with restraint.
“You’re standing on a severed head. Milady.”
And, stunned as I was that Septimus hadn’t snarled Lady Miltonwaters into oblivion, I could hardly swallow my smile when the latter found the Division Sergeant’s remark to be correct, and shrieked like a struck partridge.
“So!” Septimus swiped the head off the cobbles, proffered it face-first to the palpitating noblewoman. Lorrie shrank out of Lady Miltonwaters’s grip at last, staring at his sister with an expression as fond as it was indignant. “Got any idea who this man is?”
For all her whaleboned solidity, I really thought Lady Miltonwaters would keel over. “Do you make a habit of thrusting severed heads at passersby, or is tonight’s atrocious behaviour merely the exception to the rule?”
Septimus shrugged, dropped the head into my upturned hat. “Got to try and identify the victim, don’t we?”
“Dash it, girl, you can’t do so by carrying a head through the streets of Surrey! This is hardly the fifteenth century!”
(This from the woman who would have had me wooing by pheasant-shoot!)
“We’ll do what we’ve got to, to get this case solved. And don’t you worry, Milady – it’ll be solved sooner than you think!”
“I suppose you had better hope so,” Lady Miltonwaters returned snappishly. “For your own paltry sake.”
Septimus folded her arms. “I wouldn’t underestimate the Div, Milady. Even our rawest recruit’s from the University of Cambridge!”
Pomegranates. She’d hurled it at her adversary in belligerent triumph, striking the aristocrat on her favoured ground, flinging a hand at me – but –
But, as she could hardly have known, having Lady Miltonwaters prick up her ears for a scrap of prestige was precisely the opposite of everything I could have desired in that jolt of a moment!
“The University of Cambridge?”
The cloak swirled about, lashed the edge of my hat. Lady Miltonwaters had turned to acknowledge me at last, and now she was far too close, heady at the neck from a bottle of scent, the weighted hem of her crimson skirts lolling across my smarting toes.
“Do you mean to tell me that this cringing hermaphrodite hails from the University of Cambridge?”
Septimus could retort, could glower, could wrench the noblewoman backwards over her finger and snap her prejudices to pieces – but I was far too terrified even to speak. Under her sneering stare, I quite entirely hated myself. It was everything the month at her uncle’s estate would have been, in one horrendous burst of scrutiny. I could pick out what I was to her in those gleaming black eyes: milk-faced, and wormish, and raggedy as my cropped hair, and spasmodic with fear, and heartily easy to despise. With her looking at me the way she did, I could have been a thousand times more brilliant than my feeble self, and still found something to squirm for.
“I – erm – ”
Her glove sprang up again, smeared with greasepaint at the fingertips, gripped my jaw and twisted my face back and forth. It was a gesture I’d watched, as Edwina stalked through her would-be housemaids and checked them over – although Edwina’s amateur attempts had nothing of this pinching scorn. I’d seen how the maids’ cheeks had bulged with the pressure, seen the pulses snick in their necks. None of that had warned me quite how much it would hurt.
“I was an Oxonian myself, and I don’t remember anyone who looked half as appalling as you attending the varsity matches. Tell me your name, and let’s see if I can place you. Or, I should say, let’s see just how truthful you have been about your alma mater.”
Plums. “I – ”
“’Fraid there ain’t time for that!”
I couldn’t move my head, but the voice was Septimus’s – and the grip, too, tugging at my shoulders, until Lady Miltonwaters’s fingers pinioned nothing more substantial than the air before my eyes.
“We’ve got a head-hider to halt. Lorrie – there’s still cast in the theatre – Mr. Adelstein’s in with ’em – they’ll be in need of you.” Her eyes widened as she held Lorrie’s stare, pointed with concern. He nodded, bit his lip in a remorseful grimace. “I’m sure Lady Miltonwaters’s got her own way home.”
“Are you?” Lady Miltonwaters cried. “It’s not for you, you unsexed goblin, to dictate what your brother can and can’t – ”
“Night, Sept!” Lorrie yelped, scrambling past us and dashing headlong for the main street. Lady Miltonwaters thundered after him, opera-cloak flapping – but the theatre doors had swallowed him, and her well-dressed entourage tangled her up straightaway.
As soon as Septimus had made sure of Lorrie’s escape, we were gone, clipping down the street and looping round clumps of houses, until we’d made it to a road where even the sound of the crowd couldn’t entirely reach. The lanterns were sallower here, the darkness softer and quieter, the buildings solid cottages with neat front lawns. Some of them had candles flickering in the windows – one or two even sported carved turnips, flaming with eerie grins.
Septimus sighed, slowed our pace. Perhaps the candlelit stillness of the street appealed to her, or perhaps she’d finally noticed how much I was limping.
“Not very dutiful of me to say it – and you ain’t to mention this language to Cassandra – but – that bitch!”
She gasped, as if the word had tugged off a scab. “Pawing at Lorrie like that – he ain’t her poor boy – and he’s got a sweetheart – God, if she’d dared it any longer I’d’ve – ! Well. I’d’ve shamed the Div, most like.”
She groaned. “I’d relish it no end if the Director went right up to Milady Miltonwaters and knocked her teeth out – but she won’t. There’s no way we’d keep our funding if we struck an aristo with an uncle in the manor. And a bloody town councillor, at that. The Director’d never let me get on the wrong side of that kind of power, not even for Lorrie. Someone already wants the Div broken up, and we can’t give ’em any more reason.”
I swallowed, managed a feeble nod. Behind the nod, I was diligently eviscerating myself. Figs, but – this struggle they had, the Director and the Division, with Lady Miltonwaters and her ilk – it made a flat mockery of my twitchy little fear of socialising at the country-house! All I’d just seen – the vicious attitudes, the barbed words – they were the weapons to strike persons and organisations out of existence, without a pheasant-shoot in sight.
I really rather was a fool behind my bedroom walls, wasn’t I?
Septimus’s hand plucked at my jacket sleeve, tugged us both to a halt. She turned me about, tilted my face up to catch the wallowing rays of the nearest lantern – briskly, yes, but gently too, darting her head about to examine me, rather than contorting mine. “You’re alright? She didn’t hurt you?”
