Blazing Bodices (2 page)

 

*****

When it came to cold trails, this one was positively frozen.

After leaving Lady Crenshaw's apartments, I set out to retrace Bess's footsteps from earlier that day...all for naught. Everything appeared to line up properly with the tale she'd told me.

Surreptitiously interviewing our household staff, I found that each and every one of them backed up her story. Yes, she'd gone with them to the market. On the way home, she'd stopped off to visit Lorna Farnesworth, and they'd continued on without her.

Unsatisfied, I probed further. Setting out after supper for an evening constitutional, I swung by the Farnesworths' residence three blocks away. A knock of the boar's head handle of my cane brought a butler to answer the door.

"I come in search of a glove, my good man." I held up one of Bess's pale blue satin gloves, which I'd pocketed before leaving home. "This one is
terribly
lonely. Did my wife happen to leave behind its mate when she was here earlier today?"

The butler sniffed distastefully and shook his head once. "You have come to the wrong place, sir."

For a moment, I thought the trail was heating up. "My wife
was
here, wasn't she? Bess Hogshead?"

The butler cleared his throat and lifted one eyebrow. "Do you take me for an imbecile, sir?"

My heart pounded in my chest. I felt it, the thrill of the hunt, blazing through my veins like liquid fire. "Do you mean to say my wife
wasn't
here?"

The butler stared for an instant...then shook his head. My breath caught in my throat as I stood on the verge of confirming this vital intelligence. As I stood ready to catch my wife in a lie.

And then the butler deflated me. "Yes, she
was
here, and no, she left
nothing
behind. I saw to her wrap and gloves myself."

I couldn't help feeling disappointed. "Ah. I see then. Jolly good."

"Thank you and good day, sir," said the butler as he withdrew into the house.

And then he shut the door in my face, just as he had shut the door on this avenue of my latest puzzleventure.

 

*****

My next step was clear to me. If the beast's tracks would not lead me to the truth, I would have to shadow the beast itself. I would have to follow it, as I would an antelope to its watering hole, and watch it interact with its natural habitat.

This, of course, would require camouflage, but I was up to the task. For someone who'd followed the giant spider-gators of Bandu Shoga for hundreds of miles to the hidden treasure of Voxinian the Indignant, this would be child's play.

That night, I made certain preparations for the hunt. This involved drawing various items from the well-stocked disguise kit in the secret closet of my study and tucking them away in a valise. I added a few items of clothing and stowed the valise under the bed, ready for my mission.

Next morning, I followed my routine as if this were any other day. I woke, got dressed, and ate breakfast with Bess and the children...our girls, Ellie and Annie, both nine years old. After breakfast, I retrieved the valise from the bedroom, hid it under the overcoat draped over my arm, and tapped my way out of the house with the boar's-head cane. Just before I pulled the door shut behind me, I shouted to Bess that I would be working late at the office.

And so began the hunt.

 

*****

It felt good to be back in action. I'd been six months without travel or combat, and it had seemed like six years. For one such as I,
nothing
comes close to the thrill of the chase.

I hailed a cab, and it raced me uptown to my first destination: the Wanderers' Club. In one of the guest apartments upstairs, I changed clothes and applied the elements of my disguise.

I emerged a changed man...changed so much, in fact, that I passed the ultimate test. When Rogers, the keen-eyed major domo, saw me in the hallway, he ejected me from the premises, believing I was a stranger.

Out on the street, I stopped in front of a clothiers shop and examined my reflection in the plate glass front window. What a change I saw there!

My silver goatee was dyed black, as were my eyebrows. A false nose, bulbous and scarlet, covered my true, aristocratically aquiline one. Two enormous warts bulged from my face--one on the left cheekbone, the other on the point of my chin. A bushy black wig concealed the close-cropped silv
er stubble of my natural hair.

Instead of a black business coat and trousers, I wore a ragged gray jacket with holes in the elbows and threadbare gray pants. Topping it off, I wore a battered brown cap with a mangled visor.

I nodded with satisfaction and adjusted my posture, slouching and jutting my chin forward. My camouflage was perfect, ready for the hunt. If I, on another day, had seen me coming, looking like this, I would have thought it was a factory laborer approaching, or a beggar.

Or a street sweeper. In other words, the master of disguise had created the perfect appearance for the role he had chosen to play.

Slipping around to the rear entrance of the Wanderers' Club, I retrieved the push broom that Rogers always kept by the door. Grinning, I ran off down the alley, making my escape before Rogers could find me out.

 

*****

This time, as I dared not hail a cab, the trip across town took considerably longer. I knew no cabbie would stop to pick up someone who looked so unlikely to be able to pay his fare.

Fortunately, as I am always in peak physical condition, the exercise in no way left me winded. I returned to the street outside my home as composed and energetic as I'd been upon setting out that day.

And so I began my charade. My concealment, as they say, in plain sight.

Taking care to remain stooped over, I pushed the broom up the street and back down again, sweeping layers of soot into piles at either end. Always, I kept one eye on the front door of my home, waiting for Bess to emerge.

I felt certain she hadn't come forth yet, as her morning chores and toilette typically occupied several hours. But I presumed she would soon poke her head out of her burrow to sniff the air.

I waited at least an hour, all the while clearing more soot from the street. Fortunately, no one seemed to take an interest in me. No one seemed to notice this dawdling sweeper taking far too long to clear one solitary block of sooty cobblestones.

Finally, as I reached one end of my track and turned for another pass, the front door of my house opened, and Bess emerged in the late morning sunlight. She wore a burgundy dress, black gloves, and an exotic black hat adorned with deep green and blue peacock feathers.

Closing the door behind her, she walked down the front steps to the street and started toward me. Another woman, Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan from three doors up, called out a greeting from her own front stoop and bustled down to join her.

Smiling and chattering, the two of them set out together, looking well-festooned and resplendent. They walked right past without giving me a first look, much less a second.

As I turned to follow, beginning the hunt in earnest, I wondered where these two were headed side by side. For one fact stood out in high relief in my mind as their blithe conversation drifted back on the mid-Spring breeze.

Bess despised Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. I had never known the two of them to go anywhere together, let alone spare a civil word for each other.

 

*****

Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan led me on a winding course through London. Always, I took great care to remain discreet, to maintain a sizeable distance between us and not attract undue attention.

After a walk of nearly an hour, they reached their first destination--a tall, brick building with pale green shutters--and strolled inside. I had made preparations for just such an eventuality, constructing my disguise in such a way that it could be converted to a new configuration. All I would have to do is slip into a secluded alley, discard the jacket and wig, turn the cap inside out, and I could pass for a common repairman who looked only a little like the street sweeper who'd just gone by. In other words, I could become someone respectable enough to follow Bess into her haunts without being turned away at the door.

At least, that was the plan. I intended to blend in, and in so doing, gain access to vital surveillance.

Unfortunately, blending in would not be easy. As I was about to thread an alley and revise my disguise, I got a look at the brass plaque mounted to the right of the brick building's front door.

FEMALE PROTECTION SOCIETY. That was the name of the place. I'd heard of it but had not visited it before.

And with good reason. NO MALES PERMITTED ON PREMISES. Those words were engraved on a second brass plaque mounted on the other side of the door.

Though a lesser man might have been discouraged, I remained determined to forge ahead. Surely, repairmen would have to be admitted on occasion to do the kind of work beyond the grasp of women.

Scooting down the alley, I changed my disguise as planned and strolled out on the street, straightening my posture. As I approached the front door, a dark-haired woman in a black dress glided past and rapped once with the heavy brass knocker mounted there. The door opened, and she sailed inside, glancing back over her shoulder but once in my direction.

Startled, I paused in my tracks as she disappeared from view. For in that single glance, I had recognized the woman. And the mystery of this puzzleventure had magnified a thousandfold.

What on Earth was Countess Calypso doing here? Why had one of the most notorious evildoers in all of Britain come to the same place at the same time as my own dear Bess?

Clearly, it was more critical than ever that I get inside.

Shaking off my startlement, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and moved forward with confident purpose. Taking hold of the knocker, I clapped it twice against the wood of the door and waited.

A rectangular panel slid open, somewhat below eye level, and two gray eyes peered up at me. "Yes?" The voice was that of an older woman, in her fifties perhaps. "How may I help you?"

"I've come ta check the coal furnace, Mum." I altered my voice slightly, making it deeper, using an accent I'd picked up among dockhands during my business at the quay.

The woman turned her head, and I saw she was wearing a gray habit. She was a nun, then. "Sorry, no." She shook her head. "You're not on the schedule."

I grinned and shrugged. "Guess the boss didn' cross 'is T's this time. 'At's all right. I won' be a tick."

The nun scowled. "Come back when the proper arrangements have been made." Then, she snapped the sliding panel shut with a vengeance.

"A bum furnace can be a right killer, Mum!" I leaned close and shouted through the door. "Wouldn' wantcher fine ladies overcome by fumes now, would we?"

"Move along!" said the nun.

And that was the end of that.

Briefly, I thought of revealing my true identity and demanding entrée. A businessman of my stature might be able to bully his way past Sister Push-Off.

But that, of course, would mean forfeiting the element of surprise. It would give the women time to cover up whatever secrets waited inside. No, that wouldn't do.

Retreating across the street, I was uncertain what I should do next. I have not found myself at a loss many times in my life, and this was one of those times.

I could not follow Bess inside. I could not espy her purpose in visiting said institution, side by side with a woman she despised.

Because I, the great wandering hunter, master of camouflage, stalker of secrets, had not prepared for
every
eventuality that day.

 

*****

My wife and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan were inside the Female Protection Society for nearly two hours. I waited impatiently in my street sweeper guise, clearing soot from the cobblestones while watching the front door, wondering what in the world they were up to in there.

Had they come to volunteer, out of the goodness of their hearts, to help women in need? Had they come to make a donation to the shelter? Had they come to visit a friend or relative in dire circumstances? Or did their visit signify some other motivation altogether?

Whatever their reason for coming there, Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan finally emerged. Chattering amiably, they set off down the street. I followed as closely as I dared, listening hard for any revelatory snippets of conversation, any clue to the business they'd just conducted.

But they gave me nothing. Just the usual "And then Mrs. So-and-So said this," and "Then Mrs. Such-and-Such did that." The same old womanly cluckery, babbling on and on with no apparent point save the wasting of time. Only now I knew that the shallow surface of their idle twittering concealed depths that were unknown to me.

It was then I realized that if I wanted answers, if I wished to know their secret, I would have to delve beneath the surface in a way I had never done before. A way that would require incredible courage.