Aunt Helena’s scissors.
After that, everything happened at once. A porter climbed aboard and spotted us, letting out a great sharp yelp when he saw Mrs. Bloom’s body. That drew everyone’s attention, and before I could secure the crime scene, the baggage carriage was overrun. I found myself bustled off into the ready arms of Miss Judson.
As soon as Miss Judson looked at me, she realized what was wrong. She squeezed through the press of jabbering porters on the carriage and stomped her foot twice, like a music hall girl onstage. The sound smashed over the chaos, and everyone froze.
“There’s been an accident. You, there—Clive, yes? Get the police.”
“Yes, Miss.” Clive hopped down to the platform and dashed off.
“Myrtle, find the stationmaster.”
My job was easier. The man I’d seen earlier, hanging the sign, had forced his way to the open carriage doors. I crouched down and in hushed tones rattled off the situation. He stared at me in disbelief, so I repeated myself. “A woman’s been murdered. We need to secure the crime scene and telegraph Scotland Yard.”
“Crime scene?” he echoed in a faint voice.
“Hold it together, man!” I offered the bolstering encouragement often employed by Billy Garrett in such crises. The stationmaster was a solid-looking fellow of middle age, quite smart in his dark red railway uniform with its polished name tag. “Mr. Clark, can you secure the scene?” If I had to, I’d Deputize the entire Eastern Coastal Railway staff. He kept staring blankly, so I waved a hand at the crowd. “Keep everyone away from the body—the whole car, actually. Get some men to help you. Sir.”
The stationmaster was probably unaccustomed to taking direction from a twelve-year-old girl, but he looked relieved to have something productive to do. I knew how he felt. He moved on, barking at the crowd. “Move back, back up now, please, folks. We don’t want to disturb anything. Come along, ladies, let’s move along, into the station . . .”
As he stepped off, a vise clamped itself around my arm, making me squeak. “Ow!”
Aunt Helena had reached into the carriage and had me in a grip like iron, her face a deadly mask. “Get down from there,” she hissed.
I stared back for a moment, heart pounding, as she tried to pull me from the carriage. I didn’t care. I didn’t have time. I wrenched my arm free.
The Ballingalls arrived, Miss Ballingall’s tweedy cape flapping like an injured sparrow. A porter hastened to prop a mounting block in place so Sir Quentin could barge aboard. He took in the scene, his bluff, lionlike face turning red.
“Good God,” he swore. With a grip like Aunt Helena’s, he tried to steer his daughter back to the platform, but it was too late. She spotted Mrs. Bloom’s body and let out a scream that shook the carriage windows.
Miss Ballingall pulled away from her father. A shift came over her, and her soft face hardened. “Quickly. We must cover her up.” She hastened toward the crates. “Fetch some blankets.”
“No!” I flung myself between Miss Ballingall and the body. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t disturb anything, until the police come.”
“The police!” she shrieked. I gave Miss Judson my most pointed and imploring Look.
Miss Judson took over. “Sir Quentin, Miss Ballingall could use some air.” Her tone was impossible to disobey, and Sir Quentin nodded dumbly, leading his daughter away in an ominous echo of last night’s drama. Aunt Helena bundled her in an embrace, as if she were the one who’d been stabbed. I was glad Aunt Helena had turned her attention to someone besides me.
Finally! It was just me, Miss Judson, and a couple of workers from the train. Distantly I recognized the familiar sound of Miss Judson’s swift sketching, and that grounded me. I studied the scene with clenched fingers, wishing for my satchel with its specimen collection kit—the satchel packed neatly in my trunk, somewhere nearby, yet agonizingly out of reach.
I would have to do without it. Or my notebook. Sherlock Holmes would memorize the scene in just a passing glance. I might have very little more time than that. I cast a swift look about the carriage, but other than Mrs. Bloom’s body jammed between the trunks, head crunched to the side, there didn’t seem to be signs of a struggle.
“How did she get here?” I said. “Did her killer catch her unawares? Or was she moved here afterward?”
Miss Judson, having no more answer than I, did not reply.
I knelt beside the body, heart lodged in my throat, and tried to be brisk and businesslike. There was surprisingly little blood, beyond a darkening of her dress around the scissors. Think, Myrtle! The answer was right here, in this carriage, on her body, and I hadn’t a second to waste. But I could only stare, stupidly, my mind clunking like a broken dynamo. Last night Mrs. Bloom had been formidable and vigorous, the way she’d taken charge after the robbery. And now, lying here, she looked—diminished, somehow. Smaller. Not much taller than I, I realized.
Maudlin thoughts about Mrs. Bloom would not help her now. She needed a skilled Investigator to solve her murder. Not me, necessarily—but at least until the proper police showed up.
A moment later, a breathless, panting Clive came careening up the hill, trailed by a tall, wispy reed of a man in a blue police uniform. Relieved, I rose and wiped my sweaty hands on my skirts.
The stationmaster let them through, and the constable scrambled awkwardly into the carriage, took one look at Mrs. Bloom’s fallen body, and fainted.
v
After Constable Hoskiss’s histrionics disrupted my orderly crime scene, the stationmaster dispersed the crowd. Which included, to my ignominy, adolescent Aspiring Investigators. I’d been shuttled away and dumped in Aunt Helena’s supervision, and now we sat on the hard bench outside the station, waiting for someone with authority to tell us we could leave. I wasn’t holding out much hope.
Miss Judson sat on the bench opposite, pressing a cool damp cloth to Constable Hoskiss’s forehead. I clutched Peony to my chest. She seemed happy to be clutched, and hung on tight, claws hooked into my collar. Aunt Helena beheld the scene with a cold, indifferent impatience that made me shiver.
“It must have been a vagrant,” she said, staring straight ahead, hands clenched on her stick.
I bit my tongue before I could blurt out all the questions bubbling up inside me. How would a vagrant have got on the train? And where had he gone?
And how did he get Aunt Helena’s scissors?
Rubbing my arm where she’d grabbed me, I tried not to think too hard about the obvious explanation, about the argument last night in the sleeping carriage, about Aunt Helena pointing those scissors threateningly in Mrs. Bloom’s face. I stole a glance at her—she couldn’t have killed someone.