What had Father meant when he said I had a “knack” for disrupting things? It certainly wasn’t like when he said Cook had a knack with pastry crust. Didn’t he want me to be clever and inquisitive? I did recognize that intelligence wasn’t a highly regarded trait in the females of my species. But for pity’s sake, you never heard anyone say, “What England really needs is more stupid girls.”
Miss Judson appeared, a muslin bag draped over one arm. “Your father thought this occasion warranted a new frock,” she said.
Well, that’s ridiculous, I started to say, I can wear anything—until she unveiled the garment: navy blue silk faille, with an ankle-length skirt and a pin-tucked bodice with black frogs.* It was practically a grown-up dress, not too dissimilar to Miss Judson’s own. I reached out a hand, then paused. “Do I get a corset?”
“When you need one.”
“At this rate, that will be never,” I grumbled. I was still wearing a babyish, button-front “waist” that only emphasized my age and small size.
“True, if your curiosity kills us both,” she agreed cheerily, assisting me with the additional new layers this ensemble required (including an excess of petticoats). “Do you intend to share any details of this plan of yours?”
I stuck my arms into the sleeves, which were almost absurdly tight. “How am I going to do anything in this?”
“What do you need to do?”
“I don’t know, girl things. Play the pianoforte?”
“You don’t play the pianoforte,” she said. “You ridiculed too many piano teachers. Back to your plan.”
I turned to face her while she adjusted the skirt. Its best feature was its pockets: masses of them, inside and out. Father was an advocate of the Rational Dress Movement, which was how he’d found out about bicycle bloomers. Giving the skirts an experimental swish, I answered Miss Judson’s question, more or less. “Do you remember when we studied the medieval Mughal spies? How no individual operative ever knew all of a mission’s details, so they couldn’t give up sensitive information under torture?”
“Thank you for saving me from the thumbscrews,” Miss Judson said. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny. “You realize,” she continued, “this hinges on your father believing I know nothing of your plan. Shall I march into his office right now and say, ‘Mr. Hardcastle, I am dropping Myrtle off at her next misadventure, but I have no idea what she intends, so be certain to hold me blameless when it goes cockeyed’?”
“Very good,” I said. “You understand your part of the plan.”
v
Other girls were tedious. There were some in my neighborhood, middle-class girls like me, but we rarely associated if we could help it. They looked on me as some sort of contagious specimen, and were quick with “advice” about my hair or dress, which did not seem kindly meant at all. For my part, I felt they showed a dismal lack of interest in viscera. Father was constantly after me to mingle more with them, but they had declined all my invitations to join us for an afternoon of tea and dissection. Today, however, I had submitted to their clutches, and was enduring hours of boring card games (I won them all because they didn’t understand probability) and discussions of sensational novels I hadn’t read.
Miss LaRue Spence-Hastings, blond, fourteen, and the sort of girl who would never interrupt a murder trial, looked me over with a pitying sigh. “Caroline, don’t you think Miss Hardcastle would look absolutely fetching in this salmon pelerine?” A pelerine, Dear Reader, was a sort of lacy half-cape, practical only insofar as it prevented a girl from using her hands or arms. LaRue’s was a particularly vile shade of pink, with great pompons of fur dyed to match.
Our hostess, Miss Caroline Munjal, peeled herself off the chaise, swinging her black braid over her shoulder. “Oh, no. I have just the thing,” she said. Caroline lived across the park in a four-story town house with an excellent drop from the main stairs to the marble foyer—certainly fatal—and a carriage house big enough for a private morgue. LaRue was Caroline’s neighbor, and the two girls’ mothers had gone off together for the afternoon on their own social calls. I was alone in hostile territory, and I knew it.
Caroline scurried off and returned a moment later, arms laden with black lace and crepe. She shook out a long black dress and a bonnet spilling over with black veils and flowers and thrust them on me. “This will let you into all the best funerals!” she cried, to LaRue’s chants of “Morbid Myrtle, Morbid Myrtle.”
The truth was, I had a most compelling reason for putting up with Caroline and LaRue’s torment, and it was this: Dr. Vikram Munjal, Caroline’s father, was the Swinburne Police Surgeon. Swallowing both pride and my nastiest retort, I held the dress up to myself and tried to strike a fashionable pose. LaRue was unimpressed.
“This is boring,” she declared. “Let’s do something fun.” LaRue was the ringleader; whatever she suggested, Caroline went along with.
I stuffed my penny dreadful into my pocket. “Well,” I said, trying to sound tentative, “I’ve always wondered what’s in Dr. Munjal’s office.”
Caroline looked anxious. “I’m not allowed in there when he’s not home.”
“All the better.” LaRue popped the black bonnet atop her head and tossed the lacy dress to Caroline. “Let’s go.”
Down the corridor, with its heavy wallpaper and shelf of commemorative pitchers from Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee,* and all the way out to the back garden and the brick carriage house, Caroline continued to protest. “Can’t we just look in the windows?” she pleaded.
LaRue scoffed. “What, are you scared?” As a rule, Young Ladies of Quality, too delicate for anything so vulgar as a morgue, did not respond to such taunts. However, etiquette experts never reckoned on the LaRue Spence-Hastingses of the world. “Afraid to see a dead body?”
“Well, there isn’t any,” Caroline began, which I ought to have reckoned on. The cadavers would have been collected and sent on to the undertaker’s by now. Swinburne was too small to have a proper morgue, which is why Dr. Munjal had his laboratory at home. I’m sure the neighbors loved that arrangement.
“I’ll bet it’s haunted,” LaRue said. “All those men your dad’s cut up.”
“LaRue! That’s horrid.” Caroline really was upset. I wanted to explain that a dead body is no different from a live body, except it can’t speak to you and tell you what’s wrong. You have to figure that out from other clues. All the organs, the bones and blood and muscle tissue—those were the very same bones and blood and organs inside Caroline and LaRue right now. Besides, most of the people examined by Dr. Munjal weren’t murdered, so there really wasn’t anything to be upset about.