Nettleblack, page 37
But the old vicious letters have dried up – they don’t attack me directly anymore. They aim at my recruits. And I could sacrifice myself, if I were sure the manoeuvre would be worth it – but how would I protect the others then? And can I justify sacrificing them too?
MATTHEW. –– Wrote. No reply. Will write again. We all have a duty to this Division, and I won’t have him shirking his out of inexplicable spite.
THE SWEETINGS. –– A dangerous and frightening development. Maggie Sweeting and her brother have somehow managed to obtain a firearm – which they have already attempted to use against members of the Division in broad daylight. Septimus and Miss Hyssop were set upon by the pair, threatened at gunpoint, and only escaped by the latter briefly obtaining the pistol and firing at the furnishings. Unfortunately, she did not manage to keep hold of the gun, and as far as we know the Sweetings are still haunting the town with their weapon. A search of the garret hideout to which they took the Divisioners gave us little more than a stolen lamp, and I doubt the Sweetings will return to the location now that they know it has been compromised. Once again, we are back at square one, and we only have a matter of days.
Septimus is most insistent that Miss Hyssop’s shot was unavoidable, life-saving, and purposefully aimed to avoid causing fatal injury. If I had time and resources to spare for a thorough examination of the circumstances, I would. Not that I doubt Septimus’s word – it is alarmingly probable that the Sweetings would have used the pistol on my Divisioners had Miss Hyssop not acted as she did. Yet, on principle, I can’t condone arming Division recruits with something so lethal – if we are to maintain the standards to which I originally determined we would adhere –
This shall be a matter for after the head. After the deadline. After the Sweetings have been dealt with – for it is essential that they are dealt with, all the more so now that they seem to be expressing murderous intent. The pair must be taking advantage of our present position (see below), attempting to compete with the Head-Hider’s ghoulish notoriety and secure their former place as Dallyangle’s greatest criminal threat.
And we need Henry Hyssop. She is more of an asset than I ever dared to hope, and she might prove herself incalculably useful.
THE DEADLINE. –– Outrage, indignation and fear are all well and good, yet they do not alter the fact that the Division is in indisputable peril. We have three days to finish the matter of the Sweetings. Their case is already a major priority, now more than ever before – because we have been too lax. We must end it, before it ends us.
I will have to start informing the Division of the deadline tomorrow. Just the Division Sergeants for the moment, I think. Meagre though it may be, we still have three days, and I do not wish to frighten the apprentices out of doing their jobs effectively. I can’t answer for what the news will do to Septimus and Cassandra, but they need to know. If nothing else, it might help shock Cassandra into some kind of productive work-ethic.
What, then – for to face it, momentarily, on paper, is far better than fearing it in silence – what would be our next move, were we to miss the deadline – were our funding to be withdrawn, and the Division disbanded? What will happen to my Divisioners? What will happen to me? Do I commence a campaign for our return – will anyone credit me? Or do I give it all up as a failed endeavour – a desperate, selfish hobbyhorse – that has run its course, done some good, and been quietly strangled before it could start doing harm?
No. Of course not. To think like that is to shrug myself off in the process. We still have three days, and this maudlin self-reflection is not serving anyone. I have practicalities to address. Let us turn to those.
RESOURCES, OR THE LACK THEREOF. –– I had not initially deemed it a problem that the Division’s numbers were increasing rather slowly. Recruiting members in our piecemeal fashion allows us to fully acquaint each new Divisioner with our modus operandi, without the need for formalised training – which, at present, we are not in a feasible position to consider. Of course, every member of the Division is valued and able. And, as we have proved, strength of numbers is not a pre-requisite for protecting this town. Our first assignment was a triumph with only four of us on the case.
But when we are faced with two unprecedented and deadly threats to Dallyangle – simultaneously – and there are just seven of us to combat them, our scanty numbers start to work against us.
I thought I had solved this matter, settled it as one case per Division Sergeant. But if Septimus, our most resilient and experienced member, cannot best the Sweetings singlehandedly, I cannot send her out to look for them without support from other Divisioners, support which must extend beyond what Miss Hyssop alone can provide. And then – if I have to divert everyone except Cassandra into the Sweetings’ case – who will look for the head? And how are we to catch our head-hiding persecutor off-guard if only one person – who also has to manage the desk and field any incoming enquiries, and who may yet have to take on Matthew’s position if he does not return – is conducting a search?
And Cassandra must lead the Head-Hider investigation. I cannot go back on that now. For her sake. She needs clarity and consistency, a fixed purpose, something to which she can pin her abilities, something to hone her from her lackadaisical carelessness and –
But does that make sense? Does it serve Dallyangle? I cannot stake the town on my daughter’s reform –
And Septimus did manage to find the head, before the Sweetings attacked her –
But if I turn back to Septimus, and I set aside Cassandra’s paltry efforts to give credit where it is actually due – childish though it undoubtedly is, my daughter will never forgive me –
And I cannot lose her entirely, however close I may have come –
Enough.
It is two in the morning, and you are no longer making any sense. This is an official record of the Division’s affairs, not a place for your hysterical ramblings. You will return to your home, and get some sleep, and then tomorrow a clear arrangement of resources will manifest itself. It always does.
It has to.
Keturah St. Clare Ballestas, Director of the Dallyangle Division
Casebook of Matthew Adelstein
Pertaining to the Nettleblack affair, and to that wretched Division with which I intend to have nothing further to do
Arrived back from Gulmere this afternoon (mercifully, nothing amiss with Ma and Ta, beyond concern for my safety) to yet another missive from a certain Director who shall remain nameless. As if I intend to respond to her now! The Division is at least proving useful in one respect. According to Ma, the hamlets are ablaze with rumours of Divisionary incompetence – and thus my excuse, this time, has been readily accepted. No parental visits to Dallyangle until the business dies down. Never mind that Nicholas and I aren’t part of the business anymore!
The real business is putting an end to Nettleblack’s prodigal dalliance. I’ve sent the letter to her eldest sister – it can only be a matter of time.
Nicholas doesn’t know I’ve done it. He would have attempted to persuade me out of it, like the kindly beloved he is. When Edwina Nettleblack’s reply comes, that will be the moment to tell him – once it’s happened, and past, and there’s nothing left to jar on his sentimentality. I have far too much of Nicholas’s irrepressible generosity to be managing already. He’s developed the infuriating habit of relocating the Director’s letters, and leaving them between the pages of my casebook, or in the pockets of my jackets, or wherever else he thinks I might happen upon them. He doesn’t even resent the Division for the loss of his rat.
I sometimes wonder if he resents his family. If, indeed, he ever gives in to such an unsavoury thing as resentment.
He’s perched on the chaise, awaiting our evening meal in quintessential Nicholas fashion: by balancing a rat on his knee, and wafting a carrot at it, and endeavouring to educate it by means of the vegetable. He’s left off his waistcoat. I ought to fetch him a cardigan, he’ll be cold.
And now he glances up to meet me. “What are you staring at?”
Your ridiculous antics with the rodent, I’ve told him, mock-peremptory. Followed by a brusque appraisal of his chances of success in training the creature to jump for the carrot, and a gentle suggestion that he really must ensconce himself in a dressing-gown, at the very least. I’ll have the butler bring one down for him – and then, with nothing to do but wait for Edwina Nettleblack, it might be advisable to send the butler away until the dinner hour –
Idiot! Idiotic saccharine scribblings on dressing-gowns and rats! Has the ghastly affair turned me into a diarist, all blushes and blotched ink? Am I fated to be nothing better than that little demon Henry Nettleblack? – nothing better than her unworthy adversary? – than – oh – damn her! Damn all of them!
I didn’t have to ring for the butler. The butler rang for me. He rang for us both, by way of the front doorbell, and Nicholas and the rat went scrambling off the chaise to loiter in the next room. Sweet innocent, he plainly hoped the caller might be Division Sergeant Septimus, or even the Director herself. But if she’d come, she might have offered an apology, or allied herself to us, or –
Or done anything, in short, but stagger into the room in clomping country walking-boots, cock a pose on my hearthrug the way you’d cock a pistol, and announce herself in triumphal vicious drawl to be none other than Miss Rosamond Pleasant Myfanwy Earlyfate Nettleblack.
Nicholas, I hoped, would hear the ridiculous proclamation, and have the good sense to stay hidden.
I, fool that I was, supposed her to have manifested at the behest of her elder sister. Perhaps she wished me to escort her to the Division and her renegade sibling? The impossibility of doing that, whilst still avoiding the Director, was the only stress that scythed through my mind, as I proffered her the expected pleasantries –
“Oh, enough of that, Mr. Adelstein,” – and I quote her, actually quote her! – “Not much of a detective, are you, if you think I’m part of Eddie’s grand plan?”
I confess this beginning startled me, not that I intended to let her notice. What, then, I retorted evenly, might be the purpose of her unexpected visit?
She was wearing nonsense by way of attire: some sort of Morris & Co. trash cut vaguely to a short gown, like a child, and a greatcoat too wide for her narrow shoulders. Out of this coat she tugged a crumpled envelope – nothing less than the same one I had sent to Edwina Nettleblack an hour or so earlier. Cracked at the seal, but plainly not by Edwina Nettleblack.
“Diolch for the letter,” she spat, which I can only surmise from her tone is some ferocious Welsh curse. “So Henry’s hiding out in the Division, is she? And never you fear, my dear Miss Nettleblack,” – she was paraphrasing my letter, albeit rather loosely – “I have the perfect plan to lure her out and back into your clutches, all before you can say pheasant-shoot. Yours fawningly, Matthew Adelstein – yes?”
There was hardly time even to panic. I knew, though she couldn’t have envisioned the additional consequence, precisely what such an utterance would do to our eavesdropper, though I would have given the very roof to be wrong. Nicholas and his rat came ricocheting through the door, his hair tugged to agitated corkscrews, his wide hazel eyes staring me out with a look of incredulous accusation that I could hardly bear, even without Rosamond Nettleblack gaping as witness.
The onslaught was as expected. What had I done, what was I thinking, why had I not told him – ?
“Interesting,” Miss Rosamond muttered. Nicholas ignored her, still clutching at my shoulders; I was doing all I could to compose him with a look. “I’d no idea you had a partner.”
I snatched Nicholas at the elbows, steered him firmly behind me. Apologies could follow later. “If you would explain your purpose here, Miss Rosamond? Am I to take you to your sibling?”
She considered me – us – a moment, her sharp face tilted into her mass of writhing ebony curls. I frowned: my own consideration of her was hardly proving successful, an uncomfortable truth which irked me all the more given her evident determination to scrutinise me. I knew hardly anything of Rosamond Nettleblack, beyond the facts of her being Welsh and rebellious and somehow too much of a scandal to be trusted with a brilliant marriage. Miss Edwina had firmly refused to provide any further information on the subject. I hadn’t thought to press for it, with the youngest of the three proving so troublesome. But now I had nothing on Miss Rosamond, nothing I could summon from my casebooks, nothing I could use –
“No, you’re not to take me to my sibling. You’re not to take anyone to my sibling, least of all my eldest sister.”
And, without so much as following it with her unnerving green eyes, she threw my envelope into the fireplace.
There was no point in starting after it, or towards her, though had I been of a more volatile disposition I would gladly have done both. The flames had flayed the envelope from the letter already, and the pages were ash on the coals before any of us spoke again. I thought it best to remain silent until I was sure of my voice remaining steady under my words, Nicholas was apparently dumbfounded by the turn the exchange had taken, and Miss Rosamond plainly intended to wait, to make me retort.
I managed, eventually, to enquire what she meant by destroying the correspondence thus. My tone, I must add (for I fear I will require some defending where my composure is concerned), was perfectly cold.
“I mean,” she explained, somewhere between a snarl and a sneer, “that this is the end of it. I don’t care what Eddie’s promising you and that Division of yours. Case closed. God knows I’ve not done much of late to make Henry happy – and it won’t be easy for me to manage it in the future, not after tonight – so here’s my last bit of chivalry for chwaerlet fach: you’re going to leave her be. You never found her. She wasn’t here. Tell Edwina whatever mad invention you want to make up.”
Nicholas was clinging to my sleeve. I shook him off. I was almost – I say almost – almost incensed, for reasons which should be patently obvious.
“I intend,” I informed the conniving trollop in no uncertain terms, “to tell Edwina the truth.”
She grinned at me. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she bared her teeth; the sentiment was purely vicious. One of her teeth was made of porcelain, which was disconcerting in the extreme considering the colour of the rest of them.
“Are we all going to be telling Eddie the truth, then?”
Nicholas, brilliant (fatally so), saw what she was about before I did, and caught my arm again. “Matty, don’t – ”
“The truth about you and your lover?” she added, her eyes skidding between Nicholas and I. “Matty?”
It was my fault. Nicholas had always been able to pass off the nickname as careless unromantic affection, and he could easily have done as much again. I, who had prepared in theory for every variation on this moment, ought to have snapped straight into the pre-conceived story: that she was mistaken, that Nicholas was my relation, my ward, my apprentice. I hardly know whether it’s to my shame or my credit that, in the event, I simply couldn’t. Instead, I flushed with insufferable violence – part of it accreditable to the mere fact of hearing his name for me in someone else’s voice – and launched into snivelling, unscripted nonsense.
“This was my idea – he isn’t to blame – ”
Nicholas, with his indefatigable generosity, was intent on the same course. “No, listen, it was me, I encouraged him – ”
Rosamond Nettleblack flapped her hand at us, exasperated. “Oh, shut up! There’s no one to blame! No blame to be found, and nothing wrong or revolting or despicable about the pair of you!”
I was far too stunned to speak. Nicholas managed the question for us, lashing his ratless hand through mine as he did so (for which I could have sobbed, had I been anywhere but under scrutiny). “Then – what – ?”
She shrugged. “People who aren’t me won’t think the same. What you’re doing is still illegal. And I despise that law a thousand times over – but if it’s the only threat that’s going to stop you destroying Henry’s life – well – you’re not leaving me many other options, are you?”
I would have been less horrified had she – well, had she relished her victory, rather more than she actually did. She looked, once the sneers had dropped off, nothing so much as truly pained by her coup de grace, and by the final words even her voice was faltering. Not that it gave me any confidence to take the chance – the risk – that her evident sympathy might get the better of her. If she, who clearly felt the agony of our position as if it were her own – why, I couldn’t fathom – if she could still bear to voice the threat, she could not be trusted. It was a ghastly testament to how far she would go for her wretched little sister. Not that there was anything commendable in it.
She blinked, too sharply for an ordinary blink. Her smile, when it returned, was shaking at the edges.
“Drop the case, and I swear you’ll get nothing but silence and support from me. Otherwise – look at me! Disappointed one sister, pushed the other away, and about to fling off the remnants of my family forever – gentlemen, I’ve crossed every line in the book – so don’t you think I wouldn’t!”
She stumbled around on her heel and crashed out of the room, one of her skinny hands jerking up to cover her face. Nicholas flung himself into my arms, his chin gouging into my shoulder, gripping me so tightly I hoped it would snap us both. The rat curled up at my jaw, absurdly comforting.
Nicholas is burrowed against my collarbone now. He won’t leave my side, not even whilst I write. He has his wish, in the most dreadful manner conceivable: I shan’t be pursuing Nettleblack anymore. I don’t know what I shall tell her eldest sister. I must say something quickly. Though – if what Miss Rosamond said is to be believed – Edwina Nettleblack will have new family troubles to occupy her for the immediate future, at yet another sister’s instigation.
