Page 29

MONDAY, 19 JUNE 1911

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

21

Monday, 19 June, 8.42 a.m.

‘STEPHEN!’

I opened my eyes. Terrible idea. Closed my eyes again.

‘STEPHEN!’

Last year, I got flung into a river with my hands and feet bound together. I broke my arm and some ribs on the way down, then had to pull myself out of the current before I got crushed by a waterwheel. That was a walk in the park compared with what it took to open my eyes again.

I was lying on my bedroom floor. My livery was torn and stained. I smelt wet. From what I could gather, I’d tried to fall into bed at some point in the night and missed, taking down most of the furniture with me. Everything – the carpet, the door, my clothes, my bedding – was covered in bits of baked potato.

‘STEPHENNNN!’

I lay very still, focusing on breathing. Something bad had happened last night – something really, really bad – but I couldn’t remember what it was. All my thoughts were being drowned out by the poitin that was screaming in my skull like a banshee.

The poitin. My God, the poitin. And the football game. A memory surged from nowhere, in a sickening wave: slide-tackling people – quite a lot of people – and someone telling me to calm down, and me biting them, and then me falling into a horse trough with an armful of baked potatoes. That explained the wet clothes, then. And the potatoes.

‘STEPHEN!’

With great effort, I swivelled a single pulsating eyeball to the clock. I was three hours late for work. For all I knew, Miss Decima had been shouting since dawn.

‘I may need a moment, Miss Decima,’ I managed to call out.

‘You’ve had plenty of fucking moments! Get in here, now!’

I didn’t even have the strength to weep. I staggered to my feet – my God, my feet – and took a look at myself in the mirror. I stayed looking at myself for a while, as a punishment. Then I made my way out of my room, steadying myself along the walls, and into the parlour.

I stood blinking for a moment, trying to work out if the poitin was making me delirious. The Ivys were there again – all twenty-seven of them – but they weren’t in their usual maid’s outfits. They were wearing big hats and dresses and ribbons in suffragette colours. Miss Decima sat in the middle of them all, wincing at me.

‘My word,’ she said quietly. ‘Had fun last night, Stephen?’

‘Not really,’ I whispered.

She nodded pityingly. ‘Ladies – make some room, please. I think Stephen needs to sit down.’

All the Ivys stood up. I needed only the one seat, but none of them wanted to sit next to me, and I couldn’t really blame them. I had a moment of blinding despair when I first sat down, which quickly turned to relief when I realized that there was just a baked potato in my back pocket.

‘Well!’ said Miss Decima, like an actor carrying on a play after someone’s puked onstage. ‘Ladies, those are your instructions. Hand in your notices at your current positions and focus entirely on this new investigation. You shall report to me via the last postal service, each and every evening –’

‘So we just go to the nearest WSPU meeting and say we want to join up?’ said Ivy Dimwit, frowning at the sheet of paper in her hands.

‘For the last time, yes,’ Miss Decima muttered. ‘I’ve allocated each of you a regional branch: there are one hundred and twenty-two in total, so I’ve had to restrict our scope to the ones I have deemed most likely. Your job is to investigate what, if anything, its members know about this murder, and pinpoint who these three missing suffragettes might be. Find out if anyone is suspiciously absent and so on. Ivy Pre-Raphaelite – you will take Primrose Hill. Ivy Hogarth – you will take Notting Hill –’

‘Ramsgate?’ said Ivy Impudent, glaring at the paper. ‘How long am I supposed to be there for?!’

‘Until Thursday evening,’ Miss Decima said, ‘by which time we’ll have solved the case. I have given each of you sufficient funds for boarding and sustenance. And, to be perfectly frank, ladies, I have high expectations of you all. My secret source performed miraculous work for the investigation last night; I can happily shed light on their findings, given that Stephen has finally elected to join us.’

Ivy Church Mouse silently handed me a cup of tea and spooned four sugars into it. It was the single kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

‘I tasked my secret source with penetrating the Metropolitan Police Force,’ Miss Decima explained, consulting her notes, ‘in order to ascertain what the police have learnt about the murder weapon. It is, as I suspected, a unique item. A double hollow-ground reed blade, used specifically for shaping the mouthpiece of a bassoon. As you can imagine, this narrows down the possibilities of ownership considerably, especially when the item is personalized with the initials L. A. W. My source informs me that the police have already pinpointed the owner: one Lavinia Anne Welford, who had the blade custom-made for her eight months ago.’ She closed her notebook. ‘I informed our client of our findings late last night. I can only assume that Lavinia Welford was a card-carrying member of the WSPU, in which case her correspondence details will be held in the records at their headquarters. If I am proved to be correct, my client will send on Lavinia Welford’s address as soon as they are able to do so.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Until then, ladies: go forth! There are two further suffragettes unaccounted for. Get to those meetings and get me names. And do so right away, please, because Stephen and I need to have a quiet little word.’

I could practically feel the mercury drop. The Ivys leapt from their seats and bustled from the apartment, slamming the front door behind them as fast as they could. In less than twenty seconds, it was just me and Miss Decima facing each other in cavernous silence.