The Caster & Fleet Mysteries: Cases 1-3 Read online

  Chapter 1

  Katherine

  The house had felt lost at sea for two days. Yellow fog pressed against the windows and seeped under the outer doors. On Saturday afternoon, when I came home from work, I could barely breathe and stood gasping on the doormat, trying to replace the sulphurous tar with the smell of baking. Once inside, I felt as if my household were the only people in the world. Outside, wheels and steps were muffled, street-lights indistinct. Anything near the window frames was, despite Ada’s best efforts, smeared in oily dirt. Even Aunt Alice, unable to face the London fog, hadn’t insisted on church on Sunday.

  It was almost a relief to wake to pouring rain on Monday morning.

  Almost. I stood in the hall and wrestled Father’s umbrella from the stand. It was two-thirds my height; unfurled it would be twice my width. I would be a menace, beetling along as I forged my way through other pedestrians. A fresh gust battered the door. I looked down at my feet in their thin shoes, and the hem of my nicest office skirt.

  ‘There’s nothing for it, Katherine,’ said Aunt Alice. ‘You’ll have to wear galoshes and your father’s raincoat.’

  Father is six feet tall. I am four foot ten. I would look utterly ridiculous. I felt my shoulders sag as I buttoned the galoshes and eyed his old-fashioned raincoat. I weighed up the options; I could be drenched but stylish, or stay dry and resemble a walking advertisement for second-hand clothes.

  Aunt Alice shook her head. ‘There’s no point in wearing good things in this deluge without a coat. By the time you arrive they will be ruined. You won’t attract a nice young man that way.’

  ‘I’m not interested in attracting a nice young man,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, there’s no reason not to put on the coat. Although perhaps…’ She paused as a fresh onslaught of water crashed against the door. ‘Perhaps you could take a cab.’

  ‘We can’t afford a cab. The omnibus will be fine.’

  Aunt Alice said nothing. Her lips thinned, then she said, as she always did on Mondays, ‘I do think your father could have left things better organised when he went away. I don’t hold with women working.’

  As usual, I nodded towards the kitchen where our maid Ada washed the breakfast dishes before starting the laundry, then pointed discreetly up the stairs as our lodger Miss Robson descended, dressed for her secretarial job. Aunt Alice waggled her head as if to say ‘yes but they’re different’, and helped me on with the coat.

  ‘Could you not share a cab?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s a kind thought,’ said Miss Robson, ‘but we’re going in different directions.’

  Aunt Alice tutted.

  Opening the door, I was nearly blinded by the wind-driven rain. A bedraggled shape clumped up the steps and rummaged in a bag.

  ‘First post, Miss,’ said the postman, handing over a letter which became sodden and smudged in the seconds it took to change hands. I glanced at the smearing ink.

  R Demeray Esq., 7 Mulberry Avenue, Fulham.

  ‘Is it for me?’ said Miss Robson, buttoning her neat mackintosh.

  ‘No.’

  She sighed, but I couldn’t tell whether she was responding to my answer or the weather. Before I could say goodbye, she opened her umbrella, marched down the steps into the street and turned the corner.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Aunt Alice, sheltering behind the door.

  ‘No. It’s…’ I shoved the letter into my bag and wrestled the umbrella open. ‘I’ll take it with me.’

  A few minutes later I was sitting on the omnibus dripping. It was, as I’d told Aunt Alice, fine. That is, as a means of getting to the office. Otherwise it was revolting. Water from coats and umbrellas ran along the floor. The windows were steamed with breath and the air full of tobacco smoke. The odour brought to mind wet old dogs carrying long-dead rats which they’d fished from the muddy armpit of an inveterate smoker. Fog would almost have been preferable.

  I heaved my arm free from a stout, perspiring man with a pipe, and pulled the letter from my bag. The envelope was good quality and despite its drenching did not open easily. There were smudgy ink marks on the front and back. Inside was a short letter in an old-fashioned hand.

  Dear Mr Demeray,

  Please forgive my writing to you but I am so very afraid. I have tried to send for help but I am told fear I am imagining things or worse, mad. And indeed when I heard their voices plotting in the fog, I thought it was simply distortion of sound or my own nervousness playing tricks on my mind. They said someone called Mary was missing and I remembered that name, hissed in the swirling yellow beyond the lamps. It made me think of kindness but I can’t recall why. And I thought they said the name Meg, although perhaps I’m mistaken.

  Mr Demeray, is it true I wrote to you once before and asked for your help? Your name is famous of course, and perhaps I thought you could find something out for me. I feel that if I did it was because our families were once long ago acquainted, not simply because your books are full of the mysteries you find on your travels. Did you reply? I know you are fascinated by things which have no simple explanation. I do not know if this has a simple explanation or indeed what is afoot but I cannot shake off my fear. I am afraid your replies may have been intercepted or perhaps I am not where I think I am. Perhaps I am not even who I think I am. I do not know much of the world these days as I am not all do not venture outside anymore. But I am now so desperate for advice.

  If you can help, please could you put a notice in the personal column in the Times with reference to black tulips. That was what I’d asked you to find out about, I think. Please help. If somehow I receive your answer, I will write again. I am afraid for Mary and for myself.

  Yours

  An Admirer

  ‘Isn’t this your stop, Miss?’ said the conductor.

  The omnibus was coming to a halt. I shoved the letter into my bag and stood, wrenching my coat and skirt from under the stout man. He grunted at me and I caught his shin with my umbrella as I made my way down the aisle.

  On the pavement I took a breath of wet but comparatively fresh air and looked up at The Department. In the rain, its grey Georgian right-angles seemed more supercilious than ever. Its windows were like the cold eyes of a monster, sneering at the small sodden woman climbing its wet dark steps and entering its maw through the heavy oak doors.

  The letter seemed to burn through the leather of my bag. What had the writer expected Father to do? I needed time to think, but I would be locked in the office with a typewriter all day. A desperate woman had written to Father, but Father had been on his travels for three years without a word. Everyone said he must be dead. Then a thought crossed my mind: what if the writer wasn’t the person who was in danger? After all, Mary and Meg are common names. My little sister’s pet name is Meg. A chill went through me.

  It was down to me to work out what to do. Only I didn’t know where to start.

  Chapter 2

  Connie

  It had been a thoroughly trying morning. Even for a Monday.

  I had thought a trip into town would spare me from the worst of Mother’s fussing; but submitting to a lecture at breakfast was the price of escape. ‘Make sure you get something suitable,’ she said, darkly. ‘Nothing too modern. If you turn up at the Frobishers’ dinner looking like a maypole I shall pretend I don’t know you.’

  ‘Well, if all the clothes budget wasn’t being spent on Helena —’

  ‘She’s the debutante this year.’ Mother’s ice-blue gaze was sharp as a rapier. ‘You had your turn three years ago, Constance, and not a proposal to show for it.’

  ‘Mother!’ I hissed, my eyes flicking to
the parlourmaid smirking behind her chair.

  ‘It’s true. With Veronica to come out after Helena, we can’t afford to be dressing you a la mode. Get thee to the ready-to-wear department.’ She drained her coffee and stood, ramrod-straight. ‘I should never have called you Constance, you’re as changeable as the wind.’

  ‘You’re obviously a bad judge of character, Mother. Look at Jemima, she’s the opposite of peaceful.’

  ‘Your sister may be … peppery in her temperament, but she’s marrying an Honourable.’ Mother smiled as if she thought the title would cow me. As if I cared.

  ‘If she doesn’t roast Charles alive first. And as for Helena —’ My sister Helena was sweet and placid, but dark, short, and rather broad. I could see why Mother was focusing on getting her dressed up for her debut.

  ‘Now who’s talking out of turn?’ snapped my mother. ‘Unlike you, Constance, I have things to do. This household won’t run itself. I shall see you later.’ And with that threat she swept out, the short train on her day dress slithering over the breakfast-room parquet.

  I wiped the last piece of toast round my plate. ‘Can someone ask Hodgkins to get the carriage out for ten o’clock?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Connie,’ came the respectful reply. ‘It’s already promised to Miss Jemima.’

  ‘Where’s she going, Palmer?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Miss.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll get a cab, then.’ Our house, in the fashionable part of Pimlico, was a two-mile walk from the shops of Oxford and Regent Street, where I intended to begin my quest for a dress suitable for small-talk at the Frobishers’. In addition, the rain had poured down all morning, and I was in no mood to add a chill to my troubles.

  ‘Very well, miss. I’ll have one waiting.’

  In retrospect, watching the world go about its business, while I sped by in a cosy cab, shielded by glass and raindrops, was the best two minutes of the day. The rest of the morning was spent in various draper’s shops, being measured, appraised, and generally sized up. And the verdict? ‘Madame’s figure is — a little ahead of its time,’ sighed the petite French dressmaker. ‘We have nothing in stock.’

  ‘Couldn’t you let the seams out on that green dress?’

  She shook her head regretfully. ‘There is — how you say — insufficient allowance.’ She beamed at having got the words out. ‘Madame is … is —’

  ‘Don’t say it.’ I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Say what, Madame?’

  ‘Like a ship in full sail. No!’ I held my hand up at her look of delighted comprehension. ‘I’ve had enough of “stately” and “queenly” and all that rubbish. I’m just tall, and broad, and inconveniently sized, and no amount of corsetry can do anything about it. What am I going to do?’

  She put her thin little hand on my shoulder. ‘Perhaps Madame would care to consider something bespoke?’

  I winced. ‘I’ll have to speak to my mother.’

  It was the same story in every establishment. Nowhere had anything suitable ready-made that they could adjust to fit me. My stomach growled; but I could not face lunch at home, with Mother. She would ask, and I would have to tell her, and suffer the wrath of a perfectly-proportioned woman who simply cannot understand what the problem is. So I did what any sensible person would do and repaired to the nearest restaurant, assisted by a draper’s boy with a large umbrella.

  It was a restaurant I had never visited; and as soon as I stepped across the threshold, I felt out of place. It was a drab, cramped little room, despite its fashionable location, filled with a motley of people. Shoppers, office workers, even the occasional City gent, tucking into plates of brown stuff, slurping at tea or gulping beer, talking, reading newspapers, and generally taking up room. Their damp clothes steamed in the heat, and the whole place smelt of mildew, stale perfume, and gravy.

  ‘You staying, miss?’ said a waitress, whisking by.

  I considered leaving, but I had no umbrella, and the draper’s boy was long gone. I nodded, and she flapped a hand at a vacant seat nearby. I pulled out the chair, the scrape lost in the buzz around me, and sat down.

  Sitting opposite was a young red-haired woman, perhaps my age or a little older, huddled over a plate of grey stew and reading a letter. I couldn’t tell if the smudged writing on it was through rain or tear-stains.

  She raised her eyes and noticed me looking at the blurred ink. She glared at me, then stuffed the letter into its equally-smudged envelope and put it into a pocket of the large man’s coat slung on the back of her chair. ‘Correspondence is generally presumed private,’ she snapped. She picked up her cutlery and with something like a grimace started to eat.

  Where was I supposed to look? ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Mmph.’ She dissected a dumpling and inspected a beige fragment.

  ‘Is it nice?’

  She froze. ‘Is what nice?’

  ‘The, er, stew. I haven’t been here before.’

  ‘Oh.’ She considered. ‘It’s edible. Just about.’

  ‘Ah.’ I consulted the menu and the waitress was at my side in an instant. ‘Can I have a pork chop, please, with mashed potatoes and green peas, and a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Right away, ma’am.’ The waitress bustled off and I stretched my legs out under the table.

  ‘Ow!’ The young woman’s brows knitted together, and she reached down to rub her leg.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘There isn’t much room.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. Which is why you’re meant to keep your feet on your own side.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ I muttered. ‘You’re small.’

  ‘I’ve paid for my bit of the table,’ she said. ‘Size doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Tell that to the dressmakers,’ I snorted. The waitress returned with my coffee. I took a sip and as I lowered the cup, caught her looking at me, eyebrows raised. ‘If you must know, I’ve had a very frustrating morning.’

  Her eyebrows climbed higher.

  ‘I have to buy a dinner party dress,’ I said, feeling defensive. ‘All the clothes money has gone to my debutante sister, and nothing ready-made will fit. Mother’ll have the vapours when I tell her.’

  Her eyebrows returned to their usual place, and she put her cutlery down in the very middle of her plate. When she looked up, her eyes blazed green. ‘I got drenched on the way to work this morning,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I have been typing letters for four hours already today, and when I return I shall have to type for another four. My fingers ache, and cramp, but I have to work to bring money into the house. And someone has written a strange letter to my missing father, asking for help. I’m afraid your party dress dilemma doesn’t really interest me.’ Her chair scraped back, and she flounced to the counter before I could reply, the enormous coat slung over her arm.

  ‘Your pork chop, ma’am.’ The waitress set down a steaming plate, and as I looked at the glistening meat, the heap of mashed potato, and the bright green peas, I wondered how much more my meal had cost than the young woman’s plate of dismal stew. Sometimes I had thought that having a career and being a young woman about town might be rather interesting; but typing for eight hours a day was not quite what I had had in mind. At any rate, Mother would never allow it. Conscience cleared, I made a hearty meal and called for the bill.

  I collected my things, and as I rose to leave —

  ‘Miss! Your letter!’

  The clerk at the next table was pointing to a white rectangle on the floor.

  ‘Oh no, that isn’t my… Oh, how silly of me.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, leaning down and swiping it from the ground. ‘There.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’ I looked at the envelope in my gloved hand. R Demeray, Esq., in a fine, slanting hand. It must have fallen from her pocket when she left.

  The address was severely rain-blotted, but I made out a 7 after a splash, then Mulber—y A—ue, Fulham.

  It wasn’t an area I had eve
r been to.

  Should I leave the letter at the counter? She might come back for it.

  Or someone else might take it.

  No, the proper thing to do was to return it. Anyway, I had already claimed it as mine. I put the letter into my bag, smiled at the clerk, and stepped into the street.

  By some miracle the rain had stopped, and I strolled along. At least my own problem seemed much smaller in size, now that I had something to distract me. I must find Miss — I consulted the envelope — Demeray and give her the letter. I looked for a small red-haired woman as I strolled, until I realised she would probably be back at her typewriter already.

  So I went home, where Palmer informed me that Mother was out paying calls, asked for a cup of tea to be brought to my room, and went upstairs. And with hands that shook just a little, I drew the letter from its envelope.

  Chapter 3

  Katherine

  It was still raining when I left the restaurant. I didn’t often have lunch at all, but it had been cold in the office and I had a half-baked plan to go to a lecture in the evening if Aunt Alice didn’t fuss, which would mean no time for dinner. I had been halfway through that loathsome stew when I remembered I needed money to place an advertisement in the Times. I had already wasted the cost of purchasing a copy to establish how to do it. Not just cash but time. I checked my watch. I couldn’t be late back to work. I would have to send my advertisement by post rather than at the newspaper offices.

  But just as I was realising I should have missed lunch and used the money to buy a postal order and a stamp, this socialite swanned in and sat down as if it was the Ritz.

  What on earth was someone like that doing in this restaurant? I thought. I don’t want to be here, why on earth would she?

  But there she was, Lady Fancy with her beautiful coat and skirt, her proper bosom supported by (no doubt) a fashionable corset, expensive shoes peeping from under a heavily trimmed skirt, her pretty eyes, her lovely hat. She made me feel like a skinny child. She was so tall, womanly and confident, complaining about her clothes while I sat like a bedraggled illustration from an article on thrift in a Woman’s Weekly.