Nettleblack, page 21
I gasped a steadying breath, uncurled my fingers from my elbows. If the words alone had frozen me to a huddle of panic, I could only imagine what they must have done to everyone who had been at the same height as them.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Adelaide murmured into the sudden silence. I flinched – I hadn’t realised the governess had lingered. “I didn’t know they were of an opinion with the rest of the town – ”
“That is not the case!”
The Director’s voice struck the room with exasperation enough to make us all jump, every gaslamp and flame decidedly included. Cassandra’s hands were clenched behind her back, smarting at the knuckles, inkstained fingertips burrowing into her palms. She was staring fixedly towards that icy voice, her features pinched somewhere between a glare and a plea. The kettle began to shriek, a knife of steam jerking up above the desk.
“Enough of this. We have other things to be getting on with.”
Word by word, the Director was ironing her tone back to composure. “Adelaide – you have your duties and my son to attend to. Gertrude – see to the kettle, put that poisonous novel down and – and concentrate on your job. There is not time, under present circumstances, for you and Cassandra to be frittering your energies away on such frivolous brain-rot. Now, is there anything else that requires sorting?”
Gertie kicked me. I took the hint, skittered upright. “I – erm – ”
“Oh – Miss Hyssop.”
The Director swallowed. Her golden eyes darted over me, took in my pallid terror with strained frustration. Perhaps she’d wanted to meet a stern steady gaze, unfazed determination, unbroken resolution. Something, in short, more akin to Septimus.
“Just – ah – fetch us more logs, please.”
Outside the doors was a thicket of rain. Icy, yes, stinging down the back of my collar, setting my eyelashes fluttering like fractious moths, worming into my pocket to soften the creases of the stolen letter – but driving great cracks through the dust on my sleeves, until the beginnings of the brown fabric emerged again. It was probably the closest I was ever going to get to a bath. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back and let it drench me. My teeth rattled with the chill, whilst sodden tails of fringe pressed themselves to my forehead, and slaps of wind stiffened my skin.
I’d find the log-shed in a moment. After the Director’s despairing look, I imagined I had as long as I wanted to fulfil my paltry task – as long as felt productive. She’d set Cassandra and Gertie to a similarly assiduous purpose as I scurried out of the doors, ordering both to copy things into various ledgers. Simple jobs, easy jobs, just so that we could feel we were doing jobs.
Perhaps it isn’t meant to be your job at all!
Passionfruit, but I missed Septimus.
Then my eyelids twinged, through the lashing of the rain, enough to smart my eyes open. Something – what? Something to jolt me out of my slack daze – something that hadn’t touched me, but – even so –
I was being watched. Gaze straight as a steady pistol-shot across the square, through dripping awnings and puckered umbrellas and the geese-ridden clamour of the market-traders. A pale young woman, maybe ten of Septimus’s strides away from me, skewering the Division in a freezing stare.
I blinked at her. She didn’t disappear. If this was Adelaide the governess, she quite matched that unnerving icy voice I had just heard, with her silver-blonde bun, the dull grey shimmer of her gown, and her unwavering scrutiny. Unless, of course, the girl was simply a ghost – a possibility which I confess I couldn’t entirely dismiss. But if she was Adelaide, then what – I don’t know! – did she expect me to run and fetch the Director? Was there more to say, after the nightmare she’d just instigated? And if that was the case, why didn’t she wave – speak – anything?
10.
IN WHICH MR. ADELSTEIN TURNS
THE PROVERBIAL SCREW
Casebook of Matthew Adelstein
(translated from his frighteningly meticulous code)
Pertaining to the Nettleblack affair
Harriet (not Henrietta) Morfydd Hyssop Nettleblack, missing since Oct 29th. Youngest heir to the Nettleblack fortune (see appendix: ‘Nettleblack’s Tincture’). Twenty-one years of age, pallid skin, brown hair, green eyes, sickly-looking. Welsh, and most likely trying to hide it, if the cut-glass accent of her eldest sister is anything to judge from. Motivation for running away presently unknown.
Still in Dallyangle – and disguised as a member of my own Division!
I know I don’t possess a case compelling enough to make a positive identification. Yet, granted, I’m not without evidence. A new Divisioner enlists on Oct 29th, calling herself Henry Hyssop, matching the physical description provided by Edwina Nettleblack and the family portrait (minus most of the hair). She collapses upon discovering that Harriet Nettleblack is being pursued. She cowers behind Division Sergeant Septimus (prone to poor judgment with short-haired androgynous types), cosies up with the other Divisioners, and fawns over Nicholas, as if to seize upon my allies and prevent them from indulging my suspicions. The latter seems, infuriatingly, to have had some effect.
It makes sense for the youngest Nettleblack to choose the Division as her hiding-place. We are the only means of locating missing persons the town possesses, unless it wishes to overcome its antipathy towards the police and involve the section-house with the man on the Gulmere beat – and we are also woefully short on new recruits. If this renegade Miss Nettleblack doesn’t wish to be found – and that much is evident – what better plan than to conceal herself amidst the very people who will be charged with finding her? If she were not so vexingly disruptive, I could almost admire her for the scheme.
But accosting her outright would be unwise. The Division’s other members – particularly the younger ones – might be unwilling to give her up, a sentimental attachment which could prove fatal for us if left unchecked. The Division’s reputation has been shaken enough in the past two months. If Edwina Nettleblack, the heiress with the household name, were to accuse us of hiding her sister – or, worse, leading her astray from her familial obligations – it could cause all manner of additional problems. The business of the Sweetings – and now, the missing head – has unhinged our standing with the town and its council already. I will not have Dallyangle’s wealthiest family sticking their oar in to destroy us.
If only the wretched girl had hidden herself somewhere – anywhere – else!
But to the practicalities. I must find some way to extricate ‘Henry Hyssop’ from her maddeningly effective place in our throat. I need to sever any ties of affection she has cultivated amongst our members, to force her out of the Division – and then, only then, will we be suitably positioned to ‘discover’ her.
If it were to be posited, say, that the girl had inveigled herself into the Division with the express purpose of tearing us apart – were, indeed, one and the same person as and/or an accomplice of the author of the anonymous letters – she could be cut from the Division, exposed by the Division, and brought back to Catfish Crescent by the Division to be curtailed by her grateful sister-guardian – all, I imagine, within the same day.
This plan is not as insane as it may initially appear:
Firstly, I have no evidence that Harriet Nettleblack didn’t write those letters, or isn’t acquainted with the perpetrator. The sudden desire of an unworldly heiress to join our Division is certainly bizarre enough to merit suspicion. If I pursue her for the letters, I might either catch the culprit or eliminate a suspect. (It does admittedly seem odd that she would want to destroy the very organisation currently concealing her from her sister, but who’s to say there isn’t some larger scheme of which this is but the beginning?)
Secondly, the slightest hint – even if ultimately untrue – that the aforementioned prodigal is part of a conspiracy against the Division should be enough to destroy any burgeoning friendships she might have formed with our members.
Thirdly, Miss Nettleblack the elder is determined to keep her sister’s flit as quiet as possible, at least within her own social circle. This mania for secrecy works to our advantage, particularly when my plan for extrication relies on her sister appearing at best malicious and at worst insane. Even if I turn out to be wrong about the youngest Nettleblack and the letters, there will still be an heiress engaged in a vigorous campaign to ensure that no one in Dallyangle hears a thing about it. Thus, the Division are saved the poor publicity of another major mistake.
Fourthly – to press on the previous point – if Miss Nettleblack the elder ends this affair by owing a debt of tight-lipped gratitude to the Division for the return of her sister, I will have secured us an ally of potentially seismic influence. It’s more than about time we gathered some of those. Something, at any rate, to counter the sway of that pernicious council-member Lady Miltonwaters.
Fifthly – yes, Nicholas, I do ponder my moves thoroughly! – even if I’m wrong and Dallyangle does hear of it, it will give the true culprit(s) behind the letters a burst of confidence in my supposed ineptitude, and induce them to make a cripplingly exposing mistake of their own. Harriet Nettleblack moves from suspect to bait, and everything irons out accordingly.
(And at some point in all of this, presumably, the rest of the Division recover the missing head, and finally apprehend the ever-elusive Sweetings, thus shoring up our reputation against any further tangles.)
Impeccable!
And now Nicholas is blinking at me amazedly. I concede, there was perhaps overzealous force in my triumphant flinging-down of the pen.
To resume, and develop! The Director has far too much to juggle at present to be pulled into my scheme (if she would share more of it with the rest of us, perhaps it might be otherwise, but that’s a rant for a different page). But I do need a field-agent in the Division building, someone to help me ‘investigate’ Nettleblack straight out of her disguise. And who better than her immediate superior? Division Sergeant Septimus has a character much in need of salvaging after she permitted those burglaries, and she has already proved herself incapable where the Sweetings are concerned – so why not offer her this instead? The Director, when she does get to hear of it, will surely thank me for giving her former protégée the chance to redeem herself. It certainly would be a coup for the Division’s fallen star to regain her brilliance, having exposed the dangerous inveigler masquerading as her assistant.
In summation. The Division will be saved from another potential threat. The Director, even if she remains too preoccupied with her administrative secrets to spot the plan in action, will ultimately have cause to be grateful to me. Septimus will emerge with her abilities restored. Miss Nettleblack the elder may find herself supporting the Division more than she could have anticipated – and her original exorbitant offer of payment to us can still stand, meaning that my share of said payment can still stand, meaning that the crumbling monstrosity that is Nicholas’s rat-attic ceiling can still stand, and finally be repaired in earnest!
Nicholas, meanwhile, has retired to said appalling excuse for an attic with a pronounced smirk and an armful of rats. Apparently my jubilant antics with the pen are making them jump.
Pertaining to other affairs
Wrote to Ma and Ta to inform them of the severed head situation. I don’t want them to fret, but equally I would rather they heard of it from me. Doubtless they’ll insist I leave the bulk of this one to the Director and her strong-arms. I can’t imagine either of them remaining especially calm at the thought of me dashing about with decapitated limbs. If anything, they would much prefer my present situation. Whilst protecting Dallyangle remains the Division’s business, protecting the Division has become my business – at least where that pesky heiress is concerned.
But I haven’t told them of the Nettleblack affair, nor its potential aftermath. They’d be proud, but they’d also turn up unannounced to supervise the work on the attic. It was difficult enough finding an excuse last time they noticed something – I must tell Nicholas to stop smoking tobacco in the house, if the scent can truly permeate a letter to the extent that it did.
Despite the staggering precedent of his family, he seems convinced that mine would respond in a more welcome fashion. It’s patently useless to explain to him that his father and sister never thought much of his prospects to begin with, and still forced him out. How much more damning could my parents be with me, the prodigy, the impossible infant they moved worlds to have? They acclaim me to everyone they meet – to their entire village. I can hardly take one step in Gulmere without being besieged by fawning neighbours, anxious to discover what Moira and David’s brilliant son has been up to.
But Ma and Ta certainly wouldn’t relish having to tell their entire village about Nicholas, in any capacity.
Speaking of Nicholas, he’s going to crash straight through the ceiling in a moment. I’ve warned him about trying to lift those cages on his own. He could come out with me today, for the next instalment in the Nettleblack proceedings – better that than leave him to poke more holes in our house. Besides, it’s raining. He can walk close at my shoulder, and my hand can rest on his, and it’ll all be perfectly decorous to the rest of Dallyangle as long as we’re sharing an umbrella. Small mercies, amidst this ghastly weather!
My journal, continued
November 1st, escalating
And of course it only got worse! I was rather battling Mr. Adelstein for my continued existence before this head debacle took over, wasn’t I?
Ah, yes! That’s quite how the second half of my day’s been, parcelled up in one dreaded name, forcing itself into my sole safe location! As far as my paltry Dallyanglian geography was concerned, Pole Place was the area to fear and avoid, where the Adelstein desks bristled against the storm-laden walls and the Adelstein detective papered his house with schemes to prise me out. Pole Place – but not the Division! Not the reception-room, with its valiant wood-burner! Why did he have to come here – and after the morning we had just endured? Why couldn’t he stay shuttered up in his desk-palace and leave me be – and, more to the point, leave the one place where I felt almost akin to comfortable without a sharpness to its gaslamps, a tang on its air, an ominous creak to its every rickety floorboard?
Well. He couldn’t. And he isn’t remorseful in the slightest.
Where did I break off? Adelaide – the governess – frozen in her freezing stare. She was so fixated on the Division, she appeared to have quite forgotten the market-goers weaving about her. Her unshawled shoulders didn’t even look to be shivering, though it was as cold as it was wet, and stray slivers of sodden silver hair were steadily flattening themselves to her pale face. The damp geese gave her a nervous berth. A few impatient elbows crooked towards her, irritated customers trying to shift her from where she blocked an intersection in the stalls. I wasn’t close enough to be sure, but I’d a horrible suspicion that Adelaide didn’t blink for them.
Had she blinked at all? Why was she still watching us?
I edged for the log-shed – was it the log-shed? – a sodden wooden structure with logs in it, crouched close to the front of our building, a little shorter than my shoulders, water driving in rivets off its metal roof. It was something to duck behind, at least. Not that I was cowering – she was certainly unnerving enough to hide from, but I also had to duck to fetch the logs. Obviously that was my principal impetus – if the movement also happened to take me out of her sight, that was but happy coincidence –
Oh, pomegranates. Retrospectively – of course I was hiding!
Once I had the logs, I didn’t wait. She was still there, still watching. I’d not nerve enough to meet her gaze again, but I could feel it, the same cold twinging that had first prised my eyes open. She stared, and she didn’t stop staring, until I had both double doors closed at my back.
After that, I had the best respite I could have snatched, crouching beside the wood-burner with the moss and ash and smoke. The clock made a valiant attempt to out-tick the splash of the market – and indeed the rain, clattering on the windows and puddling on the floor beneath the broken glass, as if the missing pane had simply melted over the boards. The wood-burner heaved, struggling through the green weight of the damp wood, until the logs burst and snapped. There were a few more hours of this peculiarly raucous peace, and a merciful absence of furious civilians, before Cassandra flung Gertie and I an additional boon – not without a swift look down the corridor, to ensure her mother was ensconced in her office.
“Any things you’ve got to make the time go faster, you might as well grab them now. No one’s likely to come knocking after that.”
I twitched for her gloomy tone, met Gertie’s glum scowl with a grimace of my own – but I still ran for my journal. Let Cassandra see that I had no interest in poaching her writerly position – that I had scribbling enough of my own, without stealing any of hers! I had various tentative excuses prepared to meet any enquiries about what I was writing (the most outlandish being that Henry Hyssop dabbled in penning epistolary fiction), not that anyone had yet asked. Time sprinted when I wrote. Septimus would be back, quite before I even knew it.
Cassandra arched an eyebrow to see me with a notebook, but a cursory glance at my spasmodic handwriting gave her shape enough to tell I wasn’t scrawling anything official. Her most twitchy look she reserved for Gertie, who had belligerently resurrected her copy of Life and Limbs, albeit with the book poised for shoving under the desk if the Director re-emerged.
“I thought you’d be throwing that in the burner, after earlier.”
Gertie shrugged. “Done my jobs already, haven’t I? If your ma wants me out doing anything else, she can tell me. ’Til then, I’ll have my comfort-reading. Dr Stoker’s just found out it was Laura who operated on his walkabout hand, and he is not pleased. It doesn’t want you to put it down, this book – once you’re sucked in, that’s it. You’ve just got to keep at it.”
