A very solid wooden ladder.
In four sections.
Any one of which would have been quite heavy for me to lift, and next to impossible for me to get down from its storage place without help.
And all four of which needed to be fastened together and raised
all at once
to reach Lady Cecily’s window.
“Thank you,” I said, and walked away as I had walked in, without explanation. With my thoughts in the sort of yarn-basket snarl I was coming to find customary.
After pausing, breathing in a well-disciplined manner, and invoking the memory of my mother’s face in order to steady myself, I approached the front door and knocked.
Be timid,
I reminded myself as the scowling butler faced me.
Dr. Ragostin’s child bride, homely, bashful, and terribly naïve.
It was quite easy at that point for me to feel myself naïve.
This time Lady Theodora awaited me at the top of the grand staircase, receiving me formally in the drawing-room, making it all the more difficult for me to communicate to her the most peculiar and irregular thoughts upon my mind. As did her dress of three fabrics: black taffeta bodice and train over a violet velvet skirt draped to show a finely pleated underskirt of grey silk. This costume, and her heavy necklace of glinting black gems, offset the pallor of her lovely face. Elaborate as her gown was, yet because of its colours I felt as if already she were in mourning, as if her daughter Lady Cecily had passed away some time ago.
With her head erect and a cold look on her white face Lady Theodora stood to greet me, but I noticed that in the few days since I had seen her last, she had grown perceptibly thinner.
Crossing the room to her, instead of any of the usual polite preliminaries I blurted, “You must not give up hope, my lady!”
For a moment she stiffened, but then her dignity crumbled like ice on a stream when the spring floods break it away. “Oh, Mrs. Ragostin!” Sagging, she reached for my hands, and we sat facing one another on a settee, nearly knee to knee. “Oh, my dear Mrs. Ragostin, I
know
I must continue to hope for the best, but how
can
I, when there has been no news at all of my daughter?” She leaned towards me even more anxiously, trembling. “Has Dr. Ragostin found any trace, any sign, any
clue
of my poor, lost Cecily?”
I answered cautiously. “There are some indications, perhaps.”
“Oh!” One hand flew to her jewelled throat as she gasped for breath; for the sake of her dress she wore a “compressed waist” today. That is to say, she was tightly laced, and her wretched corset made this conversation most difficult, lest she fall down in a faint.
“Dr. Ragostin considered that once again I should be the one to interview you,” I murmured, “rather than himself, for the matter is delicate.”
“Yes, of course. I am all in a flutter – that is, I had begun to fear – ”
“I assure you, Dr. Ragostin has looked into the case most assiduously.”
“Of course.”
“He has requested me to ask you something.”
“Anything!” Once more she clasped both my hands.
I took a deep breath – which I was able to do, for I wore a corset only to hold my hip regulators and bust enhancer in place.
I asked, “Was Lady Cecily left-handed?”
A simple enough question, one would think. But not when addressed to a member of the aristocracy.
“Certainly not!” Lady Theodora snatched herself away from my touch. “What a – I never – a baronet’s daughter, left-handed?”
Having surmised it might be like this, I had prepared myself. Reacting not at all to Lady Theodora’s bristling shock, her outrage, I murmured in soothing tones, “Of course not
now,
my lady.” A lie, for I believed the girl indulged her left hand in the privacy of her rooms. “But when Lady Cecily was quite small – one can hardly expect an infant to be aware of the proprieties, can one? At that time did she exhibit any tendency towards left-handedness?”
Lady Theodora’s glare slid away from my meek but direct gaze. Looking at the velvety, flowered carpet, she muttered, “Perhaps her nurse might have mentioned something of the sort.”
“Did her governess ever comment on it?”
“Why, I – it is difficult to recall –
if
Lady Cecily was ever at all left-handed, why, the inclination was trained out of her, of course.”
This was an admission of such magnitude that it sent shivers up my spine, and not for any reason Lady Theodora could have understood. Indeed, I doubt I myself would have taken such a viewpoint if it were not for the extraordinary freedom of my own upbringing. But having been raised by a mother who believed in letting growing things alone, I was imagining how it must have been for Lady Cecily: Her baby fingers had been smacked when she tried to use the “wrong” hand, toys taken away from her left hand and placed in her right, and oh, the scoldings. Her left hand might have been tied behind her when it was time for her to learn to print her letters. All through her schooling, her knuckles must have often been rapped. Or her left palm might have been beaten with a strap.
And along with these restrictive torments, she had undergone all the usual rigours of learning to be an ornament to upper-class society. She had walked with a book on her head for perfect posture. She had learned to embroider – with her right hand – and be “well versed in all handicrafts” – with her right hand – and draw blurry little candy-coloured pastels.
But could it be that her left hand wrote large, dark thoughts in her journals? And her left hand created strong, stark charcoal drawings?
My mother had mentioned to me – it seemed so long ago, those wild and free childhood days at Ferndell Hall, but really it was less than a year ago – we had both read a new “shilling shocker,”
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
which reminded Mum of a study of the human mind recently begun in Germany, where “alienists” attempted to better understand insane people by means of concepts such as “idée fixe,” “dual personality” and the like. She had demonstrated “dual personality” by folding a photographic portrait in half lengthwise, directly in the centre of the subject’s face, then holding each half against a mirror so that it formed a new face subtly yet startlingly unlike the original.
Could it be that Lady Cecily was a dual personality? Could it be that the Lady Cecily who used her left hand was an entirely different person than she who used her right?
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
I PASSED THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY IN A dismal frame of mind.
How could I have been so stupid? Somehow I had started off by thinking that Lady Cecily could and would do the same things I might do. Such as: take pity upon London’s poor.
Not a valid assumption.
Or run away.
Not a valid assumption, either.
Or lift a large, heavy ladder.
Nonsense.
The ladder – my word, I was a fool! The ladder was the first thing I should have inspected, and also I should have thought far sooner of the garments I had seen in Lady Cecily’s wardrobe, petite dresses that had been worn by a girl much daintier than I. How ridiculous ever to have believed Lady Cecily could have put that ladder to the window herself. I doubted that I could have done it, no matter how badly I wanted to.
Also, I had no basis for thinking Lady Cecily wanted to.
I had no reason to assume any of her ideas or inclinations were the least bit like mine.
I had been blind.
And I called myself a perditorian? I needed to do far better. I needed to take my wayward mind in hand, so to speak. Apply stern logic. Reason this matter through.
Accordingly, as soon as I had reached the privacy of my lodgings that evening, I sat myself down with a portable desk in my lap and a candle pulled close on either side to do just that. On paper.
Very well. Regarding Lady Cecily’s disappearance, what were the possibilities? I could think of only three:
She eloped
She ran away
She was kidnapped
In favour of elopement I wrote down:
Appearance of same: the ladder at the window
Secret correspondence with Alexander Finch
Secret meetings, same
Against:
No mention in journals of consuming passion, for Alexander Finch or otherwise
Use of grey sealing-wax only
Bed slept in – why?
No clothing missing from her wardrobe
Lady not found with suspect
Alexander Finch most unlikely object of lady’s affection
I hesitated over that last as being subjective rather than strictly logical, but eventually let it stand so that I could move on.
She ran away: In favour of:
She felt strongly about social and reform issues, reference her journals
She maintained a double personality, charcoal versus pastel
She broke her pastels. Inference: she no longer wished to be that person
Against:
Who helped her? She could not have put the ladder to the window herself
Why use a ladder? She could have walked out the door
Why was her bed slept in?
What did she wear?
Hmm.
Still not feeling much wiser, I attempted the same reasoning process with the third possibility:
She was kidnapped. In favour of:
Ladder to window. Needed because no access otherwise
Bed slept in. Her slumber was interrupted
No dresses missing. She was taken in her nightclothes
Imagining Lady Cecily being snatched from her bed by some villain at midnight, I actually shuddered. How perfectly dreadful. And, the more I thought about it, possible; indeed, more in keeping with the facts than either of the other hypotheses. But again, there were objections:
Against:
Why did she not scream? Or why did no one hear her?
How could she have been taken down the ladder?
Why was she chosen as a victim, and by whom?
Why has there been no ransom demand?
Regarding the first objection, it could be explained away by saying that the kidnapper, or kidnappers, had rendered the lady unconscious before she could scream, perhaps by the use of chloroform. And regarding the ransom and the choice of victim, it was possible – just possible – that Lady Cecily had been taken for another, nefarious purpose on which I preferred not to dwell; indeed, I only dimly understood this practice called “white slavery.” The idea seemed terribly far-fetched.
And best dismissed, for how,
how
could the unconscious lady have been carried down such a tall ladder? I had heard that firemen could sling persons over one shoulder and manage a short descent that way, but for even the strongest man to attempt this from the fourth floor – how very risky. Foolhardy. Indeed, stupid. Why had he not simply taken her down the stairs instead?
But the evidence showed plainly that this had not been done. The ground-floor doors had remained barred, and the window locks had not been disturbed.
Perhaps he had lowered her from her bedchamber window with a rope and sling?
With the ladder in the way?
The other window?
Hardly, as it was placed directly over the railedoff cellar-way area and a water butt.
Regarding the back window, then, there would have to be at least two kidnappers, one of whom would have to descend and move the ladder away from the window while the other one lowered the unconscious lady, then replace it so that the other could come down. And then they would have to carry her inert form away.
Oh, how absurd. “They”? Who were “they”? And surely such elaborate goings-on would have been noticed by the constable who patrolled every few minutes in that well-to-do neighborhood.
So much for the stern application of logic; it led one towards the most preposterous conclusions. Of the three possibilities – Lady Cecily eloped, Lady Cecily ran away, Lady Cecily was kidnapped – not one seemed any less ridiculous than the others.
Nothing made sense. I was a fool, not a perditorian.
Throwing my papers on the fire, I lunged to my feet, lifted my mattress, and pulled out my habit. Fear of being garroted again now felt preferable to feeling so inept.