Chapter the First
October 1889
Alighting from my cab on that sunny October day, I felt an extraordinary sense of well-being. My new calling cards had finally arrived from the printer, and they bore my very own name, Enola Holmes. Wearing my brand-new, cherry-red “polonaise” style jacket, I was going calling on my best friend, and we had a great deal to talk about. Much had happened since the last time I had seen her, several months before.
First and foremost, I was no longer a fugitive from my older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Since that fateful July day when my mother had disappeared, over a year ago, they had been trying to take me in hand, send me to finishing school, et cetera, and I had been running away from them. But, due to my adventures—indeed, my coups—during that time, they had made peace with me and agreed that I—Enola Eudoria Hadassah Holmes!—was quite capable of living on my own even though I was not yet of legal age.
Also and furthermore, all three of us together, we had learned the whereabouts of our mother. She had conveyed to us a most elucidating letter saying that she was now deceased, and she had known she had not long to live, but she had gone away to spend her last days in peace, beyond the clutches of society’s dictates. She lay in an unmarked grave, and we were not to wear any ridiculous and ritualistic black mourning garments for her.
In consequence of all this—reconciling with my brothers at the same time as losing my mother—I had paused to take a breath, so to speak, in my youthful but eventful life. I now boarded in a room at the Professional Women’s Club, where even my brother Mycroft had to admit I was perfectly safe, as no males were allowed on the premises. And I had put off practicing as a “Scientific Perditorian,” a finder of things lost, until the future. No longer spending my days at “Dr. Ragostin’s” office, I was instead taking classes at the London Women’s Academy, where I particularly enjoyed the challenges of algebra, geometry, and natural philosophy. Even more, I enjoyed socializing, or perhaps I should say fraternizing, with my brothers, especially Sherlock. Getting to know him better was a particularly intriguing process.
Also and finally, during this time I quite reveled in shopping. How delightful I found it that the “hourglass figure” had at last gone out of style! Just when I no longer needed to wear hip transformers and bosom enhancers to disguise me from my brothers, they were no longer required anyway! On this particular day, I had made the rounds of the dress shops in London with my new friends Tish and Flossie, I had purchased a very modern outfit that disguised me as no one but my slender self, and now I wanted only reunion with my very best friend, Lady Cecily Alistair, to complete my happiness.
Yes, indeed, somehow she was my very best friend even though I had only met her twice, last January and last May … well, three times, if one insisted on including the encounter in the lavatory.
* * *
Sashaying up the Alistairs’ fancy-brickwork walk, I rapped a cheerful rat-a-tat-tat with the front door knocker.
After what seemed like a longish time, the customary stony-faced butler opened the door. Proffering my card, I directed more than asked, “Is Lady Cecily in?”
“Lady Cecily is not seeing anyone.” He started to close the door.
“Wait!” I stepped forwards, one foot inside the mansion to prevent him. Surely, even if she was napping, Cecily would not wish to miss my visit. I told the butler, “Take up my card and we shall see.”
But without reaching for his salver, he repeated, his tone adamant, “Lady Cecily is seeing no one.”
The sun continued to shine—a rare event in London, especially in the autumn—but I felt chilled and shadowed for Lady Cecily’s sake. What could be the matter? Having the upper-class misfortune of being born left-handed, Lady Cecily had experienced an even more draconian upbringing than most such girls, being moulded into a demure and docile right-handed ornament for society. But, secretly, she had rebelled by boldly sketching in charcoal with her left hand, and she had developed two quite different handwritings. And two personalities: one sweet and ladylike, the other a social reformer. Had she revealed her views to her parents; was she in trouble for that? Or was something more sinister going on? I had been unhappily surprised when I had heard that Cecily’s mother had returned to London to reconcile with her husband. Was “reconcile” perhaps not the exact right word?
I told the stone-faced butler, “In that case, I would like a word with Lady Theodora.” Once more I offered my card.
Once more he ignored it. “Her Ladyship is seeing no one.”
What in the world? Lady Theodora, not entertaining callers? Something was wrong.
“Heavens to Mehitabel!” I exclaimed, becoming wrought. “You know quite well she will see me. Do you not remember me?” By rounding and narrowing my shoulders, lowering my head, addressing the floor, and speaking like a well-bred sparrow, I became “Mrs. Ragostin,” who had befriended Lady Theodora in a time of crisis. “Do you not remember me?” I repeated in a bitty birdy voice before I straightened to glare at the butler from under my straw hat brim. “Well?” I barked.
I suppose my performance must have shaken him, for his carved-in-marble facade cracked and his demeanor crumbled. “Miss, um, Ragostin, Mrs. I mean, what I’ve been instructed is nobody gets in, begging your pardon, by Sir Eustace’s strict orders.” Crisp intonations had deserted him. “I dasn’t so much as touch your card, missus, or I could lose my place.”
“Sir Eustace’s orders!” I echoed, aghast, with my kid-gloved hands to my mouth, for I had heard nothing complimentary and much that was deplorable about Lady Cecily’s father.
The poor butler actually flinched. “Oh, no, miss, I didn’t mean to say—”
But I did not stay to hear what he didn’t mean to say. Dazed and alarmed, I turned, walked down the steps and out to the pavement where a hansom cab awaited me at the kerb.
From his lofty perch, the driver took the unusual liberty of expressing concern. “Rum go, Miss Enola?” A favourite of mine because he had once loaned me his cab and his exceedingly capable horse, Brownie, he had become my regular cabdriver.
“Rum, indeed, Harold,” I told him. He called himself “’Arry,” but I titled him Harold. “Please take me home.”
From hearing this exchange, the Alistairs’ butler may have concluded, if he was listening, that he had disposed of me. If so, then he was much deluded. I had every intention of seeing and speaking with Lady Cecily by whatever means possible before another day had passed.
Seated in the hansom, I smoothed my fashionably narrow skirt and sighed. The outfit I wore had no pockets and only a button-up bosom in which to stow supplies for contingencies. Never would I have dreamed I’d ever miss overskirts, bustles, panniers, and all the storage space concealed thereby! I was going to need to develop new safeguards for sleuthing.
* * *
Once back home at the Professional Women’s Club, I did not immediately retire to the chamber upstairs where I lodged. Instead, unbuttoning my polonaise, taking off my hat and swinging it by its ribbons to give an appearance of idleness, I strolled through the reading room and the library, smiling at women who looked up at me. The gentle reader must understand this was London’s, and perhaps the world’s, first exclusive club for females only. Once secure within its citadel, we could relax without fear of predatory males or society’s protocols; other members smiled back at me even if we had not been introduced.
Having not yet located the person I sought, I continued, nodding at women I recognized, through the tea room with its delicate Japanese-style furnishings, then through the card room, and so into a cheerful chintz-draped sitting room, where I saw her standing near a window: a tall, elderly lady who had interested me deeply since the first time I saw her.
She would not have gone unnoticed in any surroundings on account of her toilette: a soft, sunflower-yellow “Aesthetic” gown draping her from her shoulders to her slippers and her long grey hair streaming loose down her back. I did not know her name, but I quite wanted to become acquainted with her because I had overheard her chatting with her exceedingly cultured friends about my mother.
She had known Mum.
So I wanted to know her, although I did not yet wish to reveal who I was—because if I told her my last name, then I would have to report that Mum was deceased, when what was the harm of letting people think that Lady Eudoria Vernet Holmes was vital and free and enjoying life to the fullest somewhere?
Copyright © 2022 by Nancy Springer