Page 2 of A Conspiracy in Belgravia
Was it possible she could actually do it, compose an engrossing story inspired by the feats of her sister Charlotte?
The day before, Charlotte had assured her that she was fully worthy of the task. Livia hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. As she’d stared at the dark ceiling, the story had come to her in flashes: a grassy, mountain-ringed oasis in an arid, hostile landscape, a wagon train laden with weary yet hopeful families headed for California, a massacre brewing in the hearts of Utah Territory militiamen who feared persecution and loathed outsiders.
If she did manage to give birth to this story, it could very well go on to be featured in a respected and widely read publication. How gratifying would it be, from her neglected corner in whichever Society drawing room, to hear those guests who never had any use for her discuss her narrative with astonished admiration.
Livia imagined the warm satisfaction she would feel, a snug, enduring sense of well-being.
She took a bite of bacon and consulted the travel handbook she’d borrowed from the circulating library. It was imperative that she give a correct description of Utah. Inaccuracies on the part of Sherlock Holmes’s chronicler could diminish readers’ opinion of the great detective, and she must not let that happen.
The problem was, she also couldn’t paint too complete a picture, as even the handbook only offered patchy information. She would have to be vague about the exact location of her setting—somehow cobbling together one or two descriptive paragraphs—then pivot onto the doings of her characters.
Except she didn’t know yet who those characters ought to be. The victim would be a girl—that much was clear. But what about the eventual avenger who swooped in decades later to punish the culprits? Would that person be a woman or a man? And those culprits, who were they?
According to Mr. Mark Twain, whose account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre first gave her the idea of a story of vengeance, nine men were indicted afterward, but only one was tried in a court of law. Those who escaped justice, naturally, made for good targets for a vigilant avenger. But eight targets were too many—two or three seemed more reasonable.
Did that mean she also had to reduce the scale of the massacre to account for the smaller number of killers? Or would it be all right to say more of them had been lawfully punished? According to the records, only children younger than seven were spared—and taken in by nearby families. If her avenger was one of those children, it would add an entire other dimension of complication to the story. Could an older child, an adolescent perhaps, have crawled away during the night and escaped?
Livia rubbed her temples. Now she remembered why she never proceeded beyond a few pages in any story: too many decisions to make. Often she wished that her life weren’t so constricted, that she could make more of her own choices. But staring at the still largely empty sheet of paper before her, she was reminded that no, Charlotte was the one who wanted to make her own decisions. She, Livia, merely wished the world would be served up on a platter, cut to bite size and seasoned exactly to her liking.
A housemaid entered the breakfast parlor. Livia slammed her notebook shut. But the maid only set an ironed copy of the paper on the table and left silently.
Livia swore under her breath. Why was she always so jumpy? Why couldn’t she be calm and majestic instead?
She reached for the paper. More specifically, the small notices at the back of the paper. She especially enjoyed the ones in code, secret transmissions between lovers who didn’t dare communicate openly.
The code they employed tended to be simple letter substitutions, frequently no more complicated than shifting the entire alphabet one letter over. Some aspired to a bit of sophistication. A series of notices that started a few days ago, for example, had taken the extra step of converting already substituted letters to numbers, according to where they stood in the alphabet.
A rather distressing set of messages they were, too, a discarded lover dispiritedly yet doggedly trying to get a response from the faithless beloved.
Or at least that was how Livia interpreted the messages. She didn’t believe the sender would receive the hoped-for response, but she couldn’t help but check each morning to find out whether the unrequited transmissions were still ongoing.
She almost didn’t see her sister’s nom de guerre in print. But something made her glance back at the columns of newsprint she had skipped.
STRANGENOISESINTHEATTIC?THEREISALWAYSSHERLOCKHOLMES
In June of this year the death of the Honorable Harrington Sackville brought to notice one Mr. Sherlock Holmes, self-styled consultant to the Metropolitan Police. Since then, Mr. Holmes has made his services available to the public. Which leads to that most reasonable question: What exactly has he done for the man on the street—or, for that matter, the lady in the parlor?
One gentleman, Mr. S_______, enthused that Mr. Holmes helped him decipher clues from his beloved concerning her birthday present. A lady, Mrs. O_______, claimed that Mr. Holmes located her lost ring. A trio of elderly sisters declared he was instrumental in easing their mindsconcerning mysterious noises in the attic, which did not emanate from spirits communing via Morse code, but wood-boring insects carrying out their daily routines.
When asked about Mr. Holmes’s overwhelmingly domestic private consultations, an official at Scotland Yard answered, “How Sherlock Holmes chooses to spend his time is not the Metropolitan Police’s concern.” The same official refused comment on whether Scotland Yard would seek Mr. Holmes’s assistance in the future, except to note that his advice is not needed on any current cases.
After an exciting arrival on the scene, has Sherlock Holmes’s great promise already faded into the tedium of uncovering household curiosities? Thunderous murders to the life cycle of deathwatch beetles?
Only time will tell.
“Oh, what drivel!” exclaimed Penelope Redmayne, as she finished reading the newspaper article aloud.
“I concur,” said her aunt, Mrs. John Watson, the lady of the house.
They both looked toward the third occupant of the table, a young woman in her midtwenties. She wore a dusky pink day dress with a ruffled collar of starched white eyelet lace, which perfectly set off her shiny blond curls, large blue eyes, and generous lips. The same lace, in three tiers, also fell from her cuffs, the trailing edge of which brushed against the tablecloth as she spread a pat of butter on a freshly baked muffin.
She did it with great concentration—Miss Charlotte Holmes, Mrs. Watson had realized from the very beginning, took her food seriously. In fact, given her pleasantly plump form and the suggestion of a second chin—her features were lovely but her face would never be praised for its bone structure—one might easily suppose that Miss Holmes thought of nothing else except her meals.
Miss Holmes took a bite of her muffin, her expression intense with pleasure. But when she spoke, her voice was cool and measured. “I enjoyed the article. The timing is good—we will not need to spend on advertisement this fortnight. And frankly, the writer’s thrust is no less advantageous to our interests. Household curiosities are the backbone of our enterprise. There must be a number of men on the street—and ladies in the parlor—who have decided against consulting Sherlock Holmes because they chiefly know him as someone who advises Scotland Yard on murders. Now that they understand Holmes is happy to help with domestic oddities, they are more likely to come forward.”
She glanced down at the muffin, as if debating whether to drench it with even more butter. The termMaximum Tolerable Chinspopped into Mrs. Watson’s head—it had come up the first time they sat down at the table together, the benchmark for whether Miss Holmes ate as she wished or gave in to the lamentable necessity to curb her appetite.
With visible regret Miss Holmes set down her butter knife. “Besides, I think highly of uncovering household curiosities. They remunerate well and do not endanger anyone.”
