The House of Hidden Wonders Read online

  “No. Well, yes, but – it wasn’t like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was taking it back. To the real owner. It was stolen but not by us, not first off anyway. No one’s going to believe that, though, are they?”

  Lady Sarah frowned. “How did you know who the watch really belonged to?”

  Zinnie hesitated. “Mr Conan Doyle. He knew it had been stolen and asked us to find it.”

  “Arthur?” Lady Sarah said. “But then he can vouch for you, and all will be well.”

  “He doesn’t know that we found it in a pawnbroker’s shop. If he did, he probably wouldn’t approve.”

  “Yes, well, thank heaven for small mercies,” Lady Sarah said dryly. “I do love the dear boy, but he can also be exasperating. Getting street children to do his dirty work for him? I never heard the like!”

  “We’re good at it!” Zinnie said hotly. “And, if he knew how we did what we do sometimes, he might not employ us again and then we’d be worse off than we are now.”

  The doctor sighed. “Zinnie…”

  “And don’t you start talking about orphanages again,” Zinnie said, cutting her off. “That’s going nowhere. Nell belongs with Sadie and me.”

  “And what about Sadie?” Jex-Blake asked.

  “What about Sadie?”

  “She wouldn’t have to go into the poorhouse,” the doctor explained patiently. “She can come to me. I intend to start up a school for women who want to train in medicine. Sadie has already shown an aptitude for the profession and her knowledge of medicinal plants is unsurpassed.”

  “And, with both your sisters looked after, you will be free to take up the position I offered you in my household,” Lady Sarah concluded. “Surely that would be better than bedding down in this place and doing odd – very odd – jobs for a medical student who will likely leave the city once he’s qualified anyway?”

  Zinnie stared at Lady Sarah. She hadn’t even thought that far ahead.

  “I don’t—”

  At that moment Ruby’s haunting wail rose out of the darkness, soaring into a hellish scream that tore at Zinnie’s eardrums. She winced at the sound – Aelfine must have decided it would be best to scare these new visitors away just as she had the rest of the residents. The two women paled in the light of their oil lamps.

  “What the blazes is that?” whispered Lady Sarah, horrified.

  Across the void, the glow of Aelfine’s ghost swelled into uncertain being. It seemed even more otherworldly than before and Zinnie realized she was seeing it as if for the first time, through the two women’s eyes. They both drew in a sharp breath as the spectre flickered before them.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Lady Sarah.

  “But – what is it?” asked the doctor. “What … what can it be?”

  “It’s a spirit! A true spirit, in the raw! Oh, my poor, unhappy ghost,” said Lady Sarah. “What is it that you need to tell us? What has made you unable to rest, that you must wander so?”

  Zinnie looked between Aelfine’s spectre to Lady Sarah’s earnest face and Doctor Jex-Blake’s astonished expression. That wisp of an idea that had been floating about in her head for hours finally came within her grasp and, as Zinnie took hold of it, she knew exactly what she had to do.

  “You don’t look like you,” Aelfine whispered, as Zinnie finished changing.

  “I don’t feel like me, either,” Zinnie grumbled, draping the old shawl over her head and gathering it round her shoulders before rearranging the skirt. “But if it means I can go about my business without being recognized, I’ll have to put up with it.”

  Zinnie had finally managed to persuade the two ladies to leave Mary King’s Close and return to the safety of their own world, with the promise that she would think about what they’d said. Lady Sarah appeared confident that she could find a solution to the girls being wanted by the police, although Zinnie herself was less hopeful. People of Lady Sarah’s class always seemed to think that because they rarely experienced problems themselves, an unsolved one of someone else’s had simply not been examined with due diligence.

  After their departure, Zinnie had slipped back to her corner of the close and gathered up as many of their blankets as she could carry. She had tried to make Aelfine and Ruby go back to their secret place on the other side of the broken floor, but Aelfine had refused unless Zinnie were to go too. She was so tired that the idea of crossing that void, even with Aelfine’s guidance, had seemed doubly impossible. Instead, they had all slept behind a pile of debris, Zinnie dozing fitfully as she attempted to keep one ear open for any sign of further intrusion.

  With the blankets had come Sadie’s old dress. She’d grown out of it, so the sisters had been keeping it for Nell. It was far too small for Zinnie, but she could at least get it on and, with the shawl over her head, the fact that the shoulders were definitely not in the right place was covered up. At any rate, she looked like a girl, rather than the threadbare boy that was on the police posters.

  “You must go back over there while I’m gone,” Zinnie said, nodding towards the other side of the hole in the floor. “You and Ruby can carry the blankets, can’t you? Stay out of sight. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  To Zinnie’s surprise, Aelfine darted forward and wrapped her arms round Zinnie’s middle, hugging her hard. She hugged the girl back with a smile.

  “Thank you,” said Aelfine. “I’ve never had a sister before.”

  Ruby, standing at their feet, chattered somewhat indignantly.

  “Apart from Ruby,” Aelfine amended.

  “When I get back,” Zinnie said, “I think you’re going to have to show me exactly how you two make the ghost. All right?”

  Aelfine nodded. “We’ll show you. You’ll have to go across there –” she pointed to the void – “but we’ll help you. Won’t we?”

  Ruby tipped her head to one side and babbled her agreement.

  “Right,” said Zinnie, feeling her stomach drop to her toes. “Well, one thing at a time. Let’s see what Conan Doyle has to say first.”

  When she reached the house on Picardy Place, Zinnie found Conan Doyle in his study.

  “Give me a moment, please,” he murmured, his brow furrowed in concentration as he bent over his desk, pen in hand. “Just want to get this down…”

  Zinnie pulled the shawl from her head as she waited. A few minutes later, Conan Doyle dabbed his pen on the paper decisively and then laid it down, looking up at her with a smile.

  “My apologies, Miss Zinnie,” he said. “I have had my first story accepted for print, you know. It is to be called The Mystery of Sasassa Valley. It will be published without my name attached to it – I’m not sure I want the world to know I write stories in my spare time – but it is a satisfying feeling, I must say. Still, the tale I have to tell you now is, I confess, perhaps even more exciting.”

  “You’ve found something out about MacDuff?”

  “I have indeed. Come, take a seat and I shall tell you a story of dastardly behaviour at the far ends of the earth.”

  Zinnie did as she was told, settling into one of the chairs by the window while Conan Doyle remained at his desk. He passed her a piece of paper. It looked as if it had been cut from a newspaper and was beginning to yellow at the edges. Big letters formed words over the top of two columns of smaller text accompanied by a picture of a locomotive. The train seemed to be tipped almost on its side. On the horizon loomed huge, snow-capped mountains.

  “That,” said Conan Doyle, “is from an edition of the Scotsman that was printed in 1867. I asked a friend at the paper to go through the archive for the past twenty years, looking for any mention of severed ears and the Queensland Kings.”

  Zinnie looked up at him. “That must have taken a while! Isn’t there a new paper every day?”

  “Ah well, the Scotsman employs an archivist, you see, who goes through the new edition once it has been printed and cuts out several copies of every story. Then each is carefully filed
under a specific subject. That way, any journalist wanting to check what has been written about a subject previously can look through a vast store of what the paper has already published. Ingenious – and a vital tool for research. In this case, I told my friend to begin his efforts in the file for stories that took place in Queensland, Australia.”

  Zinnie tried to imagine what a room containing all those cut-up pieces of paper would look like. She hoped it was tidier that Conan Doyle’s own desk.

  “And this is what your friend found?” Zinnie asked, looking at the article in her hand.

  “Quite so. Shall I read it to you?”

  Zinnie handed back the paper with a brief nod and he began to read.

  18th March 1867

  THE SCOTSMAN

  NOTORIOUS CRIMINALS TARGET

  NEW LOCOMOTIVE LINE

  PASSENGERS INJURED DURING ATTACK

  Queensland, Australia. The continued construction of the world’s first narrow-gauge mainline railway is in question following a violent robbery.

  At around 5 a.m. on Thursday 17 July, the locomotive encountered an obstruction on a curve in the line three miles south of the current terminus at Bigge’s Camp. The quick-thinking and skill of the driver, Mr Harry Pinker of Brisbane, Queensland, prevented a worse catastrophe, but two carriages suffered derailment. The thieves were apparently aware that this particular train was carrying capital and wages sufficient to sustain the continued construction of the line into the Little Liverpool range of mountains.

  While the driver and the uninjured attempted to tend to the small number of passengers hurt in the accident, five men attacked on horseback, wearing scarves tied over their lower faces and wielding pistols and clubs. They demanded access to the money, which according to unconfirmed reports was in excess of £20,000.

  It was at this point that Mr Carlson Hobart, officer of Her Majesty’s police force out of Brisbane, made himself known. He had been travelling out of uniform and at the behest of the Moreton Bay Tramway Company and was accompanied by his wife, Mrs Elsie Hobart. The officer behaved valiantly, attempting to fight off the attackers, but he was subdued by a blow to the head. While he was incapacitated, one of his ears was severed and removed from the scene, along with the money.

  Eyewitnesses report that following the attack the thieves made off in the direction of the mountain range. They have not yet been caught. Though they disguised their identity, local sources have suggested this to be the boldest outrage by far of the Queensland Kings, a notorious gang of young ruffians who have taken advantage of the new state’s remote aspect to rob and extort at will. Mr Hobart’s terrible mutilation would also suggest this: the gang is previously known to have hacked off the ears of those who have attempted to stand in their way. The case is ongoing.

  “None of the rest of the piece is relevant to our enquiry,” said Conan Doyle, looking up. “What is relevant is that, two weeks later, four of the five men were captured, convicted and incarcerated. The fifth man was never found.”

  Zinnie took the piece of paper back and stared at the image of the stricken train. “Do you think MacDuff could be that last man? The one that got away?”

  Conan Doyle sighed. “It’s all just conjecture at this point. We have no proof that there’s anything at all remiss with Mr Phineas MacDuff. And yet … call it a hunch, Miss Zinnie, but yes – I do indeed believe he could be.”

  “Then … the men who have died and had their ears lopped off are three of the other men who took part in the robbery?”

  “That would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Conan Doyle said.

  “But what about the fourth man? Could he be the one killing the others?”

  Conan Doyle spread his hands. “Well. Someone has been severing the ears of the Queensland Kings. Someone who knew – intimately, it would seem – their very precise method of exacting revenge. He has to be a firm suspect, doesn’t he?”

  “But why?” Zinnie asked. “If it was used as a punishment, why do that to members of your own gang?”

  Conan Doyle shook his head. “Now that I don’t know.”

  Zinnie got up and went to the desk, opening Conan Doyle’s notebook and flipping over to his sketches of the bodies. In death, the three men were all unkempt, yet she got the impression that they wouldn’t have looked much different in life.

  “They were all poor,” she said, thinking out loud. “You thought they’d probably been sailors, come in on a ship, and they died in the gutter.”

  Conan Doyle nodded. “That’s right.”

  “MacDuff isn’t poor, though,” she said. “He’s very, very rich. You said all but one of the Queensland Kings were caught – do you know if the police ever recovered the stolen money?”

  Conan Doyle stared up at her for a moment and then slapped his hand against his thigh. “They never did! The Moreton Bay Tramway Company folded a year later, dogged by the loss. By Jove, you’ve got it! Phineas MacDuff’s fortune may well have come from that robbery.”

  Zinnie nodded. “By the time the rest of the Queensland Kings got out of jail, he was long gone, with the cash that had put them all behind bars. Maybe he never expected the gang to be freed. Maybe he thought he’d changed himself enough that he could never be recognized. But then they found him.”

  Conan Doyle looked down at the sketches. “But why would one kill the other three?”

  Zinnie shrugged. “Perhaps they all tracked him down together but one of them decided he didn’t need the others once they had. They’re obviously ruthless enough to do something that terrible. That last man sent the ears to act as a warning to MacDuff that the past has finally caught up with him.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” whispered Conan Doyle. “I really think you’ve got it, Miss Zinnie. But knowing a thing is very different to proving it.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to prove it,” Zinnie said. “Maybe we just have to get him to confess to it.”

  “Confess?” Conan Doyle asked, mystified. “How on earth would we do that?”

  “By holding a seance,” Zinnie said. “In Mary King’s Close.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Conan Doyle said, with a look of utter astonishment on his face.

  “Remember the seance at Lady Sarah’s?” Zinnie pressed. “MacDuff kept going on about the Kings. He’d already had two pairs of ears sent to him by that point. He was planning to ask who was sending them to him.”

  “But he didn’t get an answer,” Conan Doyle pointed out. “The spirits wouldn’t come to him.”

  Zinnie almost blurted out that of course they didn’t because the whole stupid seance was a fake, but she stopped herself just in time.

  “But, because of that, he doesn’t know that the ears actually came from the Kings themselves, does he?” she pointed out instead. “So he must still be wondering who they belong to. The last seance didn’t give him the answers he wanted. But if we stage another one, he can ask again, can’t he? He’s had other ears arrive since then, so he must be beside himself by now. If he’s desperate enough, he’ll say something that we can use, I know it. He’ll give something of himself away, something that will let us find the last man and get MacDuff arrested too.”

  “But why Mary King’s Close?” Conan Doyle argued. “Surely it would be better to ask Lady Sarah if—”

  “Because the ghost is back,” Zinnie said, thinking quickly. “The one you and I heard. It’s back. So we can kill two birds with one stone and find out why it’s haunting the close at the same time.”

  Conan Doyle frowned. “But you were adamant it wasn’t a ghost. You said—”

  “Well, I’ve changed my mind,” Zinnie said hurriedly. “I’ve heard it again. Seen it too. And so have Lady Sarah and Doctor Jex-Blake. Lady Sarah wants to find out why the spirit is restless, so I know she’ll come to the seance, and that will persuade others to as well – including MacDuff.”

  Conan Doyle narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re up to something, Miss Zinnie. What is it?”

  “Nothing,�
� she said. “I just want to solve the mystery of the severed ears, that’s all. And maybe put MacDuff behind bars, if it turns out we’re right.”

  Conan Doyle said nothing but continued to watch her with a shrewd look. “My butler, Rawton, brought me a poster he’d found in the street the other day. He was adamant that the person on it looked like you. But it was a boy wanted for the theft of a pocket watch and so I told him he was mistaken. I’ve always trusted you and your sisters, Miss Zinnie. More than others have told me is wise. I’m not wrong to do so, am I?”

  Zinnie set her jaw even as her stomach flipped unhappily. “No.”

  Conan Doyle nodded and thought for another moment. “Very well. I must admit, the idea of entreating the spirits in such a place as that underground maze is an intriguing one. Who knows what we’ll call into our realm from beyond the veil.”

  “Great,” Zinnie said, relieved. “Then will you tell Lady Sarah and MacDuff too? It’ll be on Friday. Eleven o’clock, Mary King’s Close. I’ll ask the doctor.”

  “This Friday?” Conan Doyle asked, surprised again. “That’s the day after tomorrow. Why such a rush?”

  Zinnie shrugged. “No time like the present, is there? Anyway, if we don’t move quickly, the last man might catch up with MacDuff before we do.”

  Conan Doyle eyed her again and she had an uncanny feeling that he could see right through her, as if she were nothing more than a spirit herself. Still, he nodded. “All right. We’ll have to hope that neither the attendees nor the medium are already booked. It’s very short notice.”

  “Don’t worry about the medium,” Zinnie said. “I’ll deal with her. You just make sure the rest are there.”

  Zinnie’s next stop after Picardy Place was the clinic to see Nell and Sadie. The sun was setting as she hurried across Waverley Bridge, the evening rain weighing down the slate-grey sky until it touched the castle’s dark turrets. She kept an eye out for police as she neared the clinic, but there was no sign of a patrol and, besides, she doubted a passing lawman would give her so much as a second glance. She looked of as little note as every other poor woman she passed and just as invisible.