Page 51 of A Ruse of Shadows
Mrs. Overhill
P.S. I remembered to sign my alias, but upon rereading the letter I noticed at least two instances where I used Mr. Underwood’s actual name. But I am too weary now for corrections—and goodness, I might have erred similarly in a previous letter, too. If I am but a fly caught in an invisible net, my every movement watched, then let me not make any more futile attempts to be clever or oblique.
Sixteen
The bookbinding shop where Mumble worked had a bow window that displayed beautifully bound ledgers, journals, and books of private correspondence. Behind the proudly exhibited wares, a curtain had been drawn shut.
But apparently, to customers in the know, this Sunday closure was incomplete. Charlotte watched from a nearby lamppost as a refined-looking elderly couple rang the bell and were admitted. They emerged a few minutes later, the husband carrying a pair of packages.
Mumble, holding open the door, half bowed as they departed.
He spied Charlotte, dressed as Mr. Herrinmore, standing across the street. Without any notable reaction, almost without hesitation, he continued to hold the door open.
Charlotte crossed the street. “How do you do, Mr. Waters?”
“I can’t complain. Yourself, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“Other than that I am working on a Sunday, no complaints either.” She smiled. “May I have a moment of your time?”
Mumble inclined his head. “After you, Mr. Herrinmore.”
Just enough daylight filtered into the interior for Charlotte to make out the display of stationery to one side and the locked cabinets to the other side, glass panes reflecting darkly, obscuring the tomes and assorted objects they housed—the bookbinder also had a good reputation as an antiquarian trader.
Mumble took her into a workroom at the back of the shop. Here it was much brighter, curtains open, lamps lit. At the center of the space was a large table on which lay several oddly shaped, milky-white sheets—calf vellum, cut as book covers.
Mumble donned a long dark apron and stationed himself before a smaller raised table on which another piece of vellum, this one perfectly rectangular in shape, had been spread and pinned on a frame. He picked up a metal container and applied a thin uniform layer of something translucent and sticky-looking to the vellum—a glue meant to neutralize the lime that had been used in dressing the skin, most likely.
“It is a beautiful craft, bookbinding, but one that is likely to become less and less in demand in our mechanical age,” commented Charlotte.
“That it is a beautiful craft is enough reason to learn. Mr. Rosenblatt wasn’t always a bookbinder, and I need not always be one,” said Mumble without looking up. “Do you have more questions about Mr. Underwood, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I do.”
Mumble continued his work, sizing the vellum in gentle yet swift strokes. “I hope you won’t mind, but I am not convinced that you are who you say you are. Or perhaps I should say, I have never believed that a rich man from Manchester is interested in Jessie and myself as boxers.”
Charlotte smiled slightly. Excellent timing—she was about to drop that façade, too. “Highly astute of you, Mr. Waters. You are correct that Mr. Nelson is no Manchester man of business but a friend who was kind enough to lend his help to my investigation.”
She handed him a calling card for E. E. Herrinmore, private investigator.
Mumble set down his brush, wiped his hands on a rag, took the card from Charlotte, and studied it. “A private investigator. Like Sherlock Holmes?”
Charlotte did not bat an eyelash. “I wouldn’t presume to comparemyself to the great consulting detective. But his work has created a certain demand that he cannot fulfill by himself, especially now that he is overseas for his health.”
Mumble pocketed the card, picked up the frame of vellum, and examined it under a lamp. “What are you investigating, exactly, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I’ve been tasked to find Mr. Underwood—or to discover what has befallen him, if he is no longer among the living—by someone who has known him for over thirty years and is deeply invested in his welfare.”
Mumble, satisfied with the vellum, put it to dry on a rack that held several similar frames. Then he took another frame of vellum from the bottom of the rack and set it on the raised worktable. “I believe Mr. Mowlem at the Unicorn already told you that Mr. Underwood didn’t mingle with the boxing crowd. If you’re looking for clues to his disappearance, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Is that why you and Miss Ferguson are so interested in Mr. Underwood’s dwellings? You suspect that he has been hiding at home?”
Mumble, about to set a long ruler against the top of this new sheet of vellum, stilled. “What do you mean, Mr. Herrinmore?”
“I visited the villa belonging to Mr. Underwood’s mistress. It has sat unoccupied for some weeks but has been recently searched. The intruder—or intruders, most likely—left behind no hints to their identity inside the house, but in the garden, I found this.”
“This” was a strand of reddish-brown hair that had been varnished and made into a small loop, the ends of the loop held together by silver fastener.
“It seems that an errant twig caught on some sort of head cover—a black knitted cap, I would venture, judging by the trace of yarn left behind on the twig. The tip of the twig further snagged on a piece of mourning jewelry underneath the cap. And in the ensuing struggle for the wearer of the cap to free everything, this insignificant loop of hair was left behind.”
