The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (learn to read books txt) 📕

‘N-not really, sir.’

‘Young lady, I believe you know more than you are telling us. This doll is disturbing. Your mistress may now be in danger. I suggest that you know where she is hiding, and between nine, when the drowned doll showed up here with the deacon, and ten-thirty, when the Wyndhams were informed, you went to see if she was all right. And you took the doll with you so that Deacon Buttons could not alert the parents just yet. But she was not there, and you became worried. You then returned to the house and alerted her mother. Have I got that right?’

The girl was preternaturally still, like a small wild animal that wishes to be invisible.

‘I take that as a yes. How is it that Deacon Buttons allowed you to run off with the doll?’

‘I just did it, afore he could stop me. He found me on the way back though. He offered to escort me through the streets, so as I would not get caught again, and—’

‘Caught?’

The girl looked down and blushed.

‘Caught by whom?’

She hesitated. Then, ‘The proctor’s men.’

‘Oh, yes, of course, I had forgotten,’ said Holmes.

At my puzzled look, Holmes explained. ‘There is a kind of private police force run by proctors from the University. In the interest of keeping “moral order”, they arrest random young women seen to be consorting with students after curfew. An indiscriminate sweep, I am told. Many are shopgirls, servants, innocent working girls. They hold them without charges in private prison called the Spinning House.’

And in our modern times! I thought. What an outrage.

‘That could be dangerous,’ continued Holmes. ‘Have you been stopped before, Polly? Perhaps on an errand for your mistress?’

Polly nodded and looked down, ashamed. ‘’Tweren’t her fault, sir. I was stupid. I stopped to ask directions and a young man … he … he started to show me the way, and I were arrested.’ The trembling increased, and a tear escaped her eye and ran down her face. She swiped it away. ‘It was a close one, sir. I was let off with a warnin’.’

I wanted to know more of these ‘proctor’s men’, but Holmes pressed on.

‘That was fortunate. Yet you risked another arrest last night? Why did you go alone to your mistress?’

‘Miss Odelia, she wanted Mr Buttons not to know where she was.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘That was brave of you. Polly, your mistress may be in a bit of trouble.’

The maid looked at her feet and refused to reply.

‘Help us to help her,’ Holmes whispered.

Polly stole a glance up at him. It was telling, even to my eyes.

‘Hello,’ came a low-pitched, female voice from the doorway.

CHAPTER 14

Atalanta

We turned to see a tall, willowy young woman with short, curly dark hair, clothed in an expensive lacy nightgown and velvet dressing gown. Her face was translucently pale, and while nearly my height, she was slender and wiry, with something of the woodland sprite about her. Not exactly beautiful, but striking in her way. The older sister, of course. I wondered why she was still abed at this hour. Her eyes shone with either fever or something else. That and her short hair suggested she might be suffering or recovering from some illness.

She placed a hand on either side of the doorway, her voluminous, lace-trimmed sleeves flopping back, revealing finely muscled porcelain arms. She smiled at us in an overly bright manner I found unnerving.

Except for the mother, these Wyndhams were all of a kind with their studied posturing, I thought.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, taking in both of us.

‘Atalanta Wyndham, I presume?’ said Holmes, glancing up from where he was examining Odelia’s shoes with an air of distraction.

‘I am she.’

He shrugged and returned to his inspection of a fine silk slipper.

‘Have we awakened you?’ I asked.

‘No,’ the young woman said. ‘But I write, you see, sometimes all night long. Now, about you, sirs. Are you from the police?’

Holmes, without turning, waved to me to answer her, and continued his inspection of the missing girl’s shoes. Atalanta Wyndham’s smile faded instantly at this rudeness.

I stepped forward. ‘No, Miss Wyndham, not the police,’ I said. ‘This is Mr Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective. I am his colleague, Dr John Watson. We have come up from London in the matter of your missing sister.’

‘Well that was certainly quick.’ She paused, staring at Holmes. ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes, you say?’ Still he did not respond. ‘Mr Holmes, do they not teach you manners in London?’

Not deigning to answer, Holmes stood and returned to the dressing table. He ran his hand underneath it. With the merest glance at the older sister, he asked. ‘Did you notice your sister’s doll missing yesterday?’

‘No.’ Atalanta Wyndham’s expression had turned icy. ‘I rarely come in here. It was the maid.’ She turned to Polly. ‘Leave us, Polly,’ she said sharply. ‘Shoo!’

Polly melted from the room.

‘Means well, but really a rather stupid girl,’ the young woman said to me. ‘I can’t help you. My sister is incorrigible.’

Holmes stood up from the dressing table and turned to face the sister. As his eyes took her in, he appeared to be abruptly taken by her beauty. ‘Miss Wyndham, please forgive me,’ he said in a curiously mollifying tone as if he had suddenly been presented a rare prize. ‘I am easily distracted when on a case.’ He crossed over to her and took her right hand in his and gently kissed it. As he raised it to his lips, her lacy sleeve fell back once again. All this was grossly out of character, and I wondered at his purpose.

‘Miss Wyndham. Author of Faded Blossoms!’ said Holmes.

I was startled but endeavoured to hide it. This must be the book from her shelf that he had pocketed! Atalanta Wyndham looked pleased and strangely triumphant.

‘How did you hear of that, pray tell? I am published, but not widely.’

Holmes danced on. ‘“December Roses”. A perfect sonnet of the Shakespearean type. You show great feeling.’

To my