“I have invited guests to come and drink wine with us,” I told him. And when I told him the names, he groaned by way of response.
“J. J. I can just about bear, butMornaday.” He groaned again.
J. J. Butterworth was a lady reporter of our acquaintance. Intrepidand enterprising, she was one of the few females I counted as a friend, although the relationship could be decidedly prickly. J. J. knew the truth of my parentage and had not revealed it in the pages of the gutter publication for which she wrote, but I harboured a fear—unjust, I suspected—that the day might dawn when her ambition would overrule her affection and my identity would be broadcast far and wide. After all, revealing the existence of the Prince of Wales’s semi-legitimate daughter would be the story of the century. But J. J. had proven herself loyal thus far, and I found myself growing increasingly fond of her.
Mornaday was a cat of a different colour. Dogged and very nearly clever, he was employed by Special Branch of Scotland Yard as a detective inspector. He had excellent powers of recall and a merry disposition, but he was rather too inclined to speak his mind to his superiors. The head of Special Branch, Sir Hugo Montgomerie, tolerated and occasionally even indulged him, but few others in the Metropolitan Police force were as motivated to favour him. Both of them, J. J. and Mornaday, thirsted for recognition. They shared an almost palpable ambition and it was a source of considerable irritation to me that they had never made a match of it—not least because it would prevent Mornaday’s outrageous flirtations with me and cure J. J. of her occasional tendency to make cow’s eyes at Stoker.
At my insistence, Stoker took himself off to make his ablutions and when he returned, his hair waving damply about his collar and his fingernails scrupulously white, it was at the precise moment that J. J. and Mornaday appeared.
I greeted them cordially, and Stoker poured a delicate Sauternes we had been given by a grateful client. There was even a plate of wine biscuits to be offered, and whilst Mornaday took one with relish, J. J. regarded us over the rim of her glass.
“You want something,” she said flatly.
“The company of our friends,” I said with a smile.
Mornaday raised his glass. “Hear, hear.” He drained it with gusto and held it out for more.
“My god, man, it is a wine meant for sipping, not guzzling as if you were at the Portly Pug in Shoreditch,” Stoker remonstrated. But he poured, and Mornaday took it, sipping with an ostentatiously raised little finger.
“Better, your lordship?” he asked in a voice thick with sarcasm. “I forget how much of an aristocratic prig you can be.”
“And I forget how much of a tiresome son of a—”
I held up my hand. “Gentlemen. Let us not quarrel. J. J., do tell us how you got on at the asylum. You have returned to London rather earlier than expected, and I have seen nothing of your story in the newspaper.”
J. J. had, upon the conclusion of our last investigation, been admitted at her own instigation to a facility for the care of demented ladies. She had been inspired by Nellie Bly, whose own incarceration in such a place had brought considerable acclaim. Bly had written frankly of the horrors such women faced at the hands of their attendants. Doused with icy water, deprived of food and drink, physically mistreated, and confined to their beds by means of restraint whilst rats and other vermin made free with their persons—it was unthinkable. The circumstances, harrowing enough for those deprived of their senses, were compounded by the frankly criminal practice of perfectly sane women being committed by their own relations solely for the purpose of keeping them out of the way. Bly had done much to draw attention to the abuses found in these establishments in America, and J. J. had thought to follow in her worthy footsteps. With the aid of Stoker’s eldest brother, she had spent a fortnight locked inside an institution in Devon.
J. J. put down her biscuit, or at least the pieces of it. She had reduced it to crumbs with the force of her grip. “It will not be published.”
“Not this week?” Stoker asked kindly.
“Never,” she replied, her usually attractive features settled into a grim mask. “I cannot write it.”
“Whyever not?” I pressed. “Are the conditions at Milverton House so dreadful that you cannot put them into print? Is the British reader so much more delicate than the American that they cannot be exposed to bitter truths?”
“Thereareno bitter truths,” she said irritably. “The facility is situated in the lea of a pretty valley, with grounds as neatly kept as any gentleman’s country seat. The house itself is fitted with every comfort to ensure privacy and solace. The food is wholesome and good. The prescribed treatments are rest and the refreshment of enticing views. The women are encouraged to paint or sing or do needlework, and whatever their chosen occupation, they are provided with all necessary supplies. Improving literature is stocked in the library, and musicians are engaged to come once a week to hold concerts of pleasant music so the patients may be inspired to calmness and good cheer. The physicians are attentive and kind, and not a single woman there was held against her will. In short, the facility is a marvel of humane treatment and consideration,” she added gloomily.
Stoker handed her a fresh biscuit. “Surely that is a good thing?” he suggested gently.
“Of course it is,” she acknowledged with a sigh. “But it doesn’t do me a bit of good, does it? I planned a piece so extraordinary, it would expose the maltreatment of the insane and garner me a place in the history of journalism. Instead, I have learnt to paint watercolours and play a tolerable hand of whist. Worse still, I returned with considerably refreshed spirits and a liking for handwork. I very nearly knitted last week. It is not to be borne.”
I turned from her morbid visage to Mornaday’s equally downcast one. “Tell us something cheerful,” I urged. “How are things at the Yard?”
“Things?” He downed his second glass of wine as swiftly as the first.“Things are not good, Veronica. Not at all good. Sir Hugo is gone to Bath for his health due to a particularly nasty bout of gout.”
“Bath! No one has gone to Bath for gout in half a century,” J. J. protested.
“Well, Sir Hugo has, and I am left at the mercy of his second, a man whose smallness of mind is equal only to the vigour with which he persecutes me. I shall count myself lucky if I am still employed this time next week.”
“Well, you are a pretty pair,” I told them with a touch of asperity. “But perhaps you will be diverted by our little conundrum. We have a puzzle for you.”
Mornaday covered his face with his hands whilst J. J. gave me a level look. “I swear before the almighty god, Veronica, if this is another of your ridiculous and outlandish investigations—” she began.
“Oh, nothing like that,” I put in hastily. “It is just that we seem to have acquired a body.”
Mornaday peeped through his fingers, clearly intrigued in spite of himself. “A body?”
“Whose body?” J. J. demanded.