But Father was distracted, as usual, and didn’t notice that Miss Judson and I were tardy, let alone that we’d already been out and about. He was hunched over the table, his plate surrounded by a sea of paperwork, a half-forgotten slice of toast dangling from his fingers.
“The new trial’s starting today, isn’t it, Father?” It was my favorite sort of case, a murder, although this one was not all that interesting, just some street thugs who’d got into a tavern brawl.
“And finishing, if all goes well,” he answered, catching his toast a moment before it dropped jam on an affidavit.* “Why don’t you come down for a visit? We’ll have lunch after. Make an outing of it.” He gave me a warm smile.
“Can I sit in the gallery and watch the proceedings?” Father rarely allowed me to come to court with him because the Magistrates and other Solicitors thought children were distracting. But I’d read every single word about his cases ever published in the Swinburne Tribune, as well as done my own studies of his law books, so I could discuss the finer points of jurisprudence with him. That hadn’t actually happened—yet—but I was ready.
“I think Myrtle would enjoy that,” Miss Judson put in. She was applying butter to her own toast with a practiced and efficient hand, not the least blob in danger of escaping.
“Mmm?” Watching Miss Judson, Father seemed to have forgotten the conversation that was taking place. “That’s settled, then.” He rose, gathered up his papers, and gave me a quick kiss atop my head. “Your hair’s wet. Have you been out in the rain?”
I shot Miss Judson a look, but Father disappeared before either of us could reply. If Miss Judson let out a sigh of relief, it was a very subtle one.
Dear Reader, kindly permit me a pause to properly introduce one of the Key Players in this narrative, my governess and confidante, Miss Ada Eugénie Judson. As you will have already Observed, Miss Judson was an exceptionally composed individual, with a cool head in a crisis*—qualities certainly useful in the governess of an aspiring Investigator. The daughter of a French Guianese nurse and a Scottish minister, she was of average height, neat and practical in dress, with the deep complexion of her Caribbean heritage. Fearing that their daughter would fall afoul of some Dread Tropical Disease, her parents had sent young Ada off to boarding school in England. (I supposed no one had told Mr. and Mrs. Judson about typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis, and cholera. As well as occasional bouts of plague, not to mention the unmentionable afflictions I was not supposed to know about. As a Young Lady of Quality.)
v
With Father gone for the office, we had nearly two hours to get to work before we were due in court. While Miss Judson was still making her way through her extremely precise toast, I sprang from my seat and cleared my plate. Despite years attempting to imitate Miss Judson, I’m afraid I took after Father. My own place was a mess of crumbs, and I had somehow managed to get poached egg inside my stocking.
“Where are you off to?” Miss Judson asked. “I’ve never seen you this eager for geography before.”
“We have to find Peony,” I said. “She saw what happened last night.”
“Ah.” Miss Judson rose, though her hand lingered near her teacup, as if she were contemplating refilling it. I stared at her impatiently. “I cannot wait to learn what method you’ve devised for extracting the testimony of a cat.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I would never,” she said. “But, Myrtle, you have to admit that even for you, collecting a cat as a witness is a bit fanciful.”
I hesitated. Adults tended to call me many things, the nicest being “precocious,” “curious,” and “irrepressible”—which I did not think was the compliment they pretended it to be—but compared to other children my age, I was not generally considered “fanciful.” Miss Judson was an excellent judge of character, however, so if she suggested I was being anything but strictly rational, it gave me pause.
“Very well,” I said carefully. “Perhaps we should go speak to Mr. Hamm. We’ll need to know what to do about my botany lessons, anyway.” The Redgraves groundskeeper had been tutoring me for the last two years. He was extremely knowledgeable, and Father approved because he thought it was “good for me to play outdoors” once in a while.
“Now that,” Miss Judson said, “is a capital idea.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were back at Redgraves, this time properly dressed for an outing in the gardens. Describing Redgraves’s grounds as “gardens,” however, does them a grave disservice. They were bigger than Gravesend Commons, the public park our neighborhood was built around. It used to be a cemetery before they built up all the houses,* but it had all once been private land belonging to the Wodehouse family. Redgraves, the ancestral home of the Wodehouses, was a gloomy redbrick affair, its slate rooftop studded with gables and turrets and chimney pots, with a downturned-mouth of a staircase out front. Compared to famous castles like Windsor or Highclere, Redgraves was just a cottage—a mere four stories and twenty-three rooms, including a nationally famous library and a locally famous modern bathroom. By Swinburne standards, though, it was a palace.
We approached Redgraves the usual way this time, through the hedge between our properties. But already we could see, or rather smell, that something was amiss.
“Is something burning?” Miss Judson said. “I hope it’s not the house!”
That idea threw the morning’s events into an even more dramatic and sinister light, but it turned out it was just Mr. Hamm, finally out at work. Mr. Hamm was the only groundskeeper at Redgraves, despite the gardens’ size and reputation. In her eccentric way, Miss Wodehouse had whittled the staff down over the years until only the head gardener was left. He was tending a bonfire just outside the garden walls. I couldn’t tell what was being burnt, as the fire had already reduced its contents to ash.
“Hullo, Mr. Hamm,” I said, since “good morning” hardly seemed appropriate, given that he’d just lost his employer and potentially his livelihood.
He tipped his floppy hat to us, showing a red and sweaty face and damp black hair. “Aye, lass, Miss Ada. You heard the news, then?”
“Yes, terrible business.” I could sense Miss Judson’s approval of this response, that I’d remembered polite niceties and hadn’t dived straight into interrogating the man.
“We’ve the flower show coming up,” he said, voice creaky. “We were to exhibit her Black Tiger hybrid. A real beauty, took her four years to develop.”
I nodded sympathetically, although I had not seen these flowers myself. Miss Wodehouse had forbidden our lessons to take place in her lily garden, and I had only glimpsed it briefly as I hastened past on other business. But Mr. Hamm talked of them often, and those lilies might have been the only thing at Redgraves that Miss Wodehouse was actually nice to. They were almost certainly the only thing she loved.