Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea (6 page)

Rueful (but not absolutely mortified), Mr. Pickett took Lady Beatrice’s arm and was gratified when she clung to him. “I will be your perfect knight, Miss Beatrice. Pray, let me escort you to the good lady.”

As they made their way up the lodging house stairs, Lady Beatrice smoothed back her hair at last.

“Well, I’ve certainly won an admirer,” she said, a trifle wearily. “I trust our absence proved useful?”

“It did that,” said Mrs. Corvey. “Very interesting desk that man had, and I think the Gentlemen will want the matter pursued. I may have found a new cook, as well,” she added thoughtfully.

“Splendid!”

“Well, it’ll want some careful managing; wait and see. But we’ll see what flattery and a higher wage can do.”

“A little unscrupulous, is it not?”

“It’s a hard business we’re in, my dear.”

They opened the door to their rooms to find Mrs. Otley seated at the table admiring something by lamplight, with the other ladies crowded around her.

“—but it looks so very grisly,” Jane was complaining. “I really wish you had given it a proper burial.”

“What’s all this?” Mrs. Corvey set her cane in the umbrella stand and approached the table.

By way of response, Mrs. Otley turned the object that lay before her on the table and revealed it to be a skull.

“Erato found someone’s head in Kents Cavern,” said Herbertina.

“It’s a
skull
,” said Mrs. Otley with some heat. “And I’m not at all sure it belonged to a person. It looks very primitive to me.”

The others made room at the table and Mrs. Corvey and Lady Beatrice sat down to consider Mrs. Otley’s find. As skulls went (and Lady Beatrice had seen a few), it was certainly odd-looking. The skull was large, the teeth were remarkably long and the zygomatic bones were very broad. Although the cranial vault was high and wide, suggesting a large brain, there was evidence of a faint sagittal crest.

Mrs. Otley pointed at this last item and said defensively, “I’m quite sure that this is an archaic feature.”

“Perhaps you found a Druid’s head,” suggested Miss Rendlesham.

“What a horrid thought!” said Maude.

“Not to one of a scientific mind,” retorted Mrs. Otley. “I shall make a drawing of it and send it to Mr. Darwin. There was what appeared to be a grave or a midden there—I am quite sure I can unearth further specimens if I return. Perhaps it will turn out to be a find of great importance!”

“No doubt, my dear,” said Mrs. Corvey, optics whirring as she examined the skull through different lenses. “Perhaps we won’t keep it on the table where we take our tea, all the same, eh? Charlotte, I believe you have a hat box you can lend Erato?”

With a martyred air Miss Rendlesham fetched forth the box that had contained her ill-fated bonnet, and the skull was placed within. Such was its size, however, that the lid failed to quite close, giving the impression that the ghastly spectre of Death was peeping out through hollow eyes. This effect was slightly diminished by the pink ribbon they were obliged to tie around the box to keep the lid fastened.

As Mrs. Otley bore her trophy away to a side table, Herbertina said, “Oh! And you’ve another letter from the Gentlemen, Mrs. Corvey.” She produced it from her jacket pocket and handed it across.

Mrs. Corvey took it with a sigh. “Well, there’s half a night’s work with the encryption book for me, and no mistake.”

“May I help?” asked Lady Beatrice.

“I should be grateful,” said Mrs. Corvey.

Lady Beatrice laid aside the encryption book. “I suppose, then, I shall be obliged to continue my romance with Mr. Pickett.”

“Best way to find out what’s what, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Corvey, reaching for another sheet of foolscap. “Order No. 1: determine whether any further evidence of underwater craft exists. Answer: if the evidence of
my
eyes ain’t enough, we can send a couple of the girls up on the cliffs at Daddyhole with a Talbotype camera.

“Order No. 2: determine probable location of docking for same. Answer: that’ll be a nice trick, won’t it? Though I expect he’s using those sea caves under the cliff.”

“I suppose I could try and wheedle it out of Mr. Pickett,” said Lady Beatrice. “Assuming, of course, that he is in fact the culprit.”

“He’s bloody well up to
something
,” said Mrs. Corvey, “from what I found on his desk. What’s a gentleman want with all them incendiary devices, I should like to know? To say nothing of needing to pay for a cove with a forge? Which brings us to Order No. 3: determine evidence of manufactury. Answer: It looks obvious to me, but I expect a bit more digging through his desk is called for.”

She looked at Lady Beatrice and raised an eyebrow. “Hope you don’t find him too displeasing, my dear. You may be obliged to allow him a number of liberties.”

Lady Beatrice made a dismissive gesture. “I make a firm distinction between duty and pleasure, Mrs. Corvey.”

“That’s the spirit, dear. Do make another discreet assignation, would you? With your dear mamma in attendance, of course. I should like another crack at that cook, as well.” Mrs. Corvey settled down to draft her lengthy report to the Gentlemen. “Now, why don’t you go take a little supper? See if you can’t get some tea and toast sent up to me; I expect
I won’t get to bed before midnight.”

Herbertina was assigned the role of amateur photographer, being judged the least likely to be remarked upon while wandering the cliff tops with a knapsack and a tripod. Nothing loathe, she traded her tailored day clothes for a loose coat and a cheerfully striped country neckerchief, donned a broad-brimmed straw against the sun, and marched off manfully to Daddyhole.

The path up the limestone cliffs was easy and gradual, but the day was very warm; before long, Herbertina’s coat was hanging off the tripod strapped across her knapsack and her neckerchief hung loose. Her loose shirt and custom corsetry ensured that, even coatless, she displayed only the fashionable full chest of a well-dressed young man, and no revealing curves. And she was profoundly grateful, in the warmth of the day, that she could remove a layer of clothing and walk freely.

The cliff tops, when attained, were mostly unwooded, and she made her way through knee high herbage that sent up a smell like incense under the sun. The sea was a polished blue as calm as a ballroom floor, stretching away to what Herbertina fondly imagined was the seething coast of France (which had replaced its latest King with yet another Republic in February) but thought was probably a more mundane storm cloud far off in the Channel.

From time to time she stopped to set up the tripod and take the view, though she was saving the actual treated paper for the cottages that Mrs. Corvey had glimpsed from Mr. Pickett’s carriage. The Gentlemen had made improvements to the Talbotype device that allowed the operator to load 14 ready-made blanks into the camera prior to use. However, changing the pack of light-sensitive paper was the part that Herbertina found most difficult to achieve without exposing all of them, so for now she contented herself with practice on the focusing lens and eyepiece adjustment.

Still, it was very pleasant to stroll along and play the naturalist, all alone in the shining summer morning. While not naturally a solitary person, as Lady Beatrice or Mrs. Otley were, Herbertina found it occasionally a great relief to be alone. It was easier to maintain privacy in one’s own head during work (when, indeed, she was usually immersed in artistic personae) than it was in the girls’ school atmosphere of the Ladies’ private residence. She genuinely enjoyed the masculine quiet of clubs and bars, and so was now quite relishing her meander along the cliffs. The rolling emptiness of the cliff tops stretched all around her, and when she turned back from time to time, the white walls of Torbay looked like a wreath of lilies thrown down on the ruddy sands.

It was a little shy of midday when the rolling irregularity of the brush resolved itself into three tiny cottages. Herbertina set course for their chimneys, torn between hoping no one was home to ask her what she was doing and wondering if any of them had a working pump or well for an over-heated wanderer. To her pleasure, when she reached her goal she found both lack of inhabitants and an accessible well.

The cottages stood in a rough arc around the well, all facing the bay. They showed signs of recent repair, but were empty: no one came to the doors at Herbertina’s hail, nor while she sloughed her hat and burdens and hauled up the well-bucket. When she was refreshed, she went and peered in each tiny front-facing window: neither furniture nor cottagers in the front rooms, though each showed a doorway into a windowless back room. Examining the back walls, it was obvious that there had once been windows: they were now bricked neatly up, hiding whatever was within. The doors, front and rear, were locked, which was a curious affectation in an isolated country cottage.

Pondering that, she took her first Talbotypes of the new brickwork, to document the anomaly. Then she returned and set up her tripod and camera in the shade of the wellhouse roof to wait for the anomalies for which she had actually come hunting.

With Herbertina off on her reconnaissance mission, Mrs. Otley also elected to take advantage of the fine weather and return to Kent’s Cavern. None of the other Ladies were inclined to come with her, but that was not distressing—she quite enjoyed excavating on her own and understood that the joys of such physically active scholarship were not to every one’s liking.

Indeed, very few women were so inclined. Until last year, Mrs. Otley had enjoyed a very satisfying correspondence with Mary Anning, who had made such remarkable discoveries in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast. Of course, dear Mary had specialized in marine reptiles, and so would probably not have been that taken with the strange skull from Kents Cavern. It would have been pleasant, however, to discuss the dig itself with someone else conversant in the tricks and trials of excavation…alas, Mary Anning had succumbed to a cancer in her breast last year.

“‘Grant unto them, we beseech Thee, Thy mercy and everlasting peace,’” murmured Mrs. Otley as she marched along, and somewhat self-consciously dedicated her day’s digging in Mary’s name. She had been raised in a High Church tradition, and the doing of good works was always a virtue.