Sherlock's Sisters E-Book

Nick Rennison

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 559

Beschreibung

Sherlock Holmes was the most famous detective to stride through the pages of late Victorian and Edwardian fiction, but he was not the only one. He had plenty of rivals. Some of the most memorable of these were women: they were 'Sherlock's Sisters'. This exciting, unusual anthology gathers together 15 stories written by women or featuring female detectives. They include Dorcas Dene, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Hagar the Gypsy, Judith Lee and Madelyn Mack. Editor Nick Rennison has already compiled several highly entertaining collections of stories from what he considers a golden age of crime fiction, including The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, More Rivals ofSherlock Holmes and Supernatural Sherlocks. His latest anthology turns the spotlight on the women detectives who could more than match their male counterparts.

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR NICK RENNISON

MORE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

‘This collection, like its predecessor Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, is a delight for fans of the history of crime writing and lovers of the short story mystery format. I can’t think of a more pleasant afternoon’s reading than this. Fun and informative’ – Paul Burke, NB Magazine

‘Writer, editor and Victorian specialist Nick Rennison does and has produced another fascinating anthology of stories from “the golden age of gaslight crime”’ –Mike Ripley, Shots Mag

‘Rennison set out to demonstrate the range and variety of late Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction... I’d say that he has succeeded in this aim’ – Martin Edwards, Do You Write Under Your Own Name

Supernatural Sherlocks

‘An unsettling and entertaining read!’ – Lizzie Hayes , Promoting Crime Blogspot

‘The Sherlock boom of the late 19th century also sparked a craze for stories of the supernatural and these are celebrated in Nick Rennison’s new anthology Supernatural Sherlocks’ – Mike Ripley, ShotsMag

THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

‘An intriguing anthology’ – Mail on Sunday

‘A book which will delight fans of crime fiction’ – Verbal Magazine

‘It’s good to see that Mr Rennison has also selected some rarer pieces – and rarer detectives, such as November Joe, Sebastian Zambra, Cecil Thorold and Lois Cayley’ – Roger Johnson, The District Messenger (Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London)

THE RIVALS OF DRACULA

‘These 15 sanguinary spine-tinglers… deliver delicious chills’ – Christopher Hirst, Independent

‘A gloriously Gothic collection of heroes fighting against maidens with bone-white skin, glittering eyes and blood-thirsty intentions’ – Lizzie Hayes, Promoting Crime Fiction

‘Nick Rennison’s The Rivals of Dracula shows that many Victorian and Edwardian novelists tried their hand at this staple of Gothic horror’ – Andrew Taylor, Spectator

‘The Rivals of Dracula is a fantastic collection of classic tales to chill the blood and tingle the spine. Grab a copy and curl up somewhere cosy for a night in’ – Citizen Homme Magazine

To Eve with love and thanks

INTRODUCTION

Female detectives make their first appearances surprisingly early in the history of crime fiction. The 1860s was not a decade in which women in real life had much scope to forge independent careers for themselves, particularly in the field of law enforcement, but, in the pages of novels and short stories, they were already busy solving crimes and bringing villains to justice. Andrew Forrester’s 1864 book The Female Detective (recently republished by the British Library) introduced readers to the mysterious ‘G’, a woman enquiry agent employed by the police who sometimes goes by the name of ‘Miss Gladden’. There had been women who turned detective in fiction before. Wilkie Collins’s short story entitled ‘The Diary of Anne Rodway’, for example, was published in 1856 in Dickens’s magazine Household Words, and has a heroine who investigates the suspicious circumstances of a friend’s death. However, Forrester’s character seems to have been the first professional female detective in British fiction. Like ‘Miss Gladden’, ‘Andrew Forrester’ was a pseudonym. The author’s real name was James Redding Ware (1832-1909), a novelist, dramatist and writer for hire in Victorian London who produced books on a wide variety of subjects from card games and English slang to dreams of famous people and the lives of centenarians. The Female Detective consists of a number of ‘G’’s cases, narrated by herself, in which she deploys her deductive and logical skills to reveal the truth.

The Female Detective, and other titles such as WS Hayward’s Revelations of a Lady Detective which appeared at about the same time, were published as ‘yellowbacks’. These were cheaply produced books, so called because of their covers which often had bright yellow borders. They were sold mostly at the bookstalls which had recently sprung up at railway stations across the country, and were intended as easy, disposable reads for train journeys.

For nearly twenty-five years, Miss Gladden and Mrs Paschal, the heroine of Hayward’s book, had no real successors in English fiction. The third woman detective did not put in an appearance until 1888 when Leonard Merrick (1864-1939) made Miriam Lea, a former governess turned private investigator, into the central character of his short novel Mr Bazalgette’s Agent. Employed by Mr Bazalgette’s detective agency, Miriam pursues an embezzler halfway across Europe in what is a charming, skilfully written narrative. Unfortunately her creator, Leonard Merrick, who was in his early twenties when he wrote Mr Bazalgette’s Agent, came to hate it. He went on to become a well-respected novelist whose admirers included HG Wells, JM Barrie and GK Chesterton. George Orwell enjoyed his novels and wrote a foreword to a new edition of one of them. In later life Merrick clearly saw his detective story as an embarrassment – ‘the worst thing I wrote’, he called it – and made every effort to cover up its existence. He took to buying up copies of the book and destroying them which explains why only a handful now remains in existence. Luckily, the British Library republished it in their ‘Crime Classics’ series in 2013 so readers today can see that Merrick was unjustly severe on his own work.

By 1890 there had only been a very small number of pioneering women detectives in crime fiction but that was about to change. Two phenomena dictated that change. One was the astonishing increase in the number of magazines and periodicals in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Between 1875 and 1903, that number nearly quadrupled from just short of 700 to more than 2,500. Not all of them, of course, carried crime stories but a significant proportion did. The market for all kinds of what would later be called ‘genre’ fiction, but especially crime stories, grew exponentially.

The other factor was the advent of Sherlock Holmes. The great detective’s debut in A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887, did not immediately start the Holmes craze. It was only when The Strand Magazine began to publish the short stories featuring Holmes and Dr Watson four years later that the public took the characters to its collective heart and worldwide fame beckoned. The success of the Holmes stories was so startling that soon every fiction magazine was looking to duplicate it and writers of all kinds were hoping to come up with a detective as appealing.

Between 1891 and the outbreak of the First World War, dozens and dozens of crime-fighting characters made their bow in the periodical press. Each writer strove to make his detective stand out from the crowd. Provide your creation with some kind of USP and you might, at least in your dreams, attain the kind of success Conan Doyle had done. So a blind detective (Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados), a detective who was a Canadian woodsman (Hesketh Prichard’s November Joe), a Hindu from a remote Indian village (Headon Hill’s Kala Persad), and many more with a bewildering variety of talents, characteristics and geographical origins were sent out into the world to attract potential readers.

Among all the competing sleuths, a significant number were women. These female detectives were almost as diverse as their male counterparts. Some had special talents which helped them in their work. Richard Marsh’s Judith Lee, who appeared in a series of stories published in The Strand Magazine in 1911, was a lip-reader who was forever spotting crooks discussing their nefarious plans. Diana Marburg, the so-called ‘Oracle of Maddox Street’, who was created by the writing partnership of LT Meade and Robert Eustace, was a palm-reader, although she solved her cases more through the application of observation and common sense than through her skill at interpreting lines on the hand. Several of the women detectives, most notably George R Sims’s Dorcas Dene, had been actresses and their stage experience came in handy when they were donning disguises to pursue villains.

Many of the female detectives from the late Victorian and Edwardian periods were women obliged, for a variety of reasons, to make their own way in the world without the support of husband or family. They were resourceful and swift to adapt themselves to new circumstances. Catherine Louisa Pirkis’s Loveday Brooke had been ‘thrown upon the world penniless and almost friendless’ by ‘a jerk of Fortune’s wheel’ but she becomes the leading light in Ebenezer Dyer’s detective agency. ‘She has so much common sense that it amounts to genius,’ her boss remarks. Mollie Delamere, the heroine of Beatrice Heron-Maxwell’s 1899 book, The Adventures of a Lady Pearl-Broker, is a young widow who has no assured income. ‘People seem to think it a disgrace that one’s husband should not leave one enough to live on,’ she wryly comments. She takes a job as an agent for pearl merchant Mr Leighton. This exposes her to many dangers and adventures, all of which she takes in her stride.

The 1890s and 1900s were an era in which feminism was on the rise. Educational opportunities were increasing. More and more women were demanding access to professions like medicine and journalism. They wanted to challenge men in what had previously been exclusively masculine domains. It is no surprise that the crime fiction of the time provided plenty of examples of what was called ‘The New Woman’ in action. Grant Allen’s Lois Cayley is a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge. In the course of her globe-trotting adventures, she wins a bicycle race, exposes the charlatanry of a quack doctor, rescues a kidnapped woman and kills a tiger. By doing so she amply proves herself to be a match in spirit and intelligence for any man. The eponymous protagonist of M McDonnell Bodkin’s Dora Myrl: The Lady Detective is a brilliant mathematician with a medical degree. Unable to get a practice, she has tried various jobs (including journalism) before she falls into detective work. There her gifts and personality finally come into their own. Bodkin was a prolific writer whose earlier creations had included a male detective named Paul Beck. In a later book, Beck and Dora work together and eventually marry.

Like Dora Myrl, many of the female detectives from the decades before the First World War were created by men. This was largely a simple reflection of the fact that the majority of the stories of all kinds in the periodical press were written by men. However, there were plenty of women writers publishing stories in magazines like The Strand, Pearson’s Magazine, The Idler and the dozens of competing titles which could be found in newsagents and on railway bookstalls. Possibly the best example of such a woman is LT Meade who, with her regular collaborator Robert Eustace, makes two appearances in this anthology. Miss Florence Cusack and Diana Marburg, the ‘Oracle of Maddox Street’, are among many series characters that the immensely productive Meade created, both with and without the assistance of other writers.

In America, women writers such as Anna Katharine Green produced early examples of detective fiction but women detectives were few and far between before 1900. Those that did appear were mostly published in so-called ‘dime novels’, the transatlantic equivalents of the ‘yellowbacks’ and cheap railway formats which, in Britain, had provided a home for Miss Gladden and Mrs Paschal. Characters such as the heroine of Madeline Payne, the Detective’s Daughter, published in 1884, Mignon Lawrence, a feisty New Yorker sent west in pursuit of a bad guy, and Caroline ‘Cad’ Metti, a beautiful Italian-American who took centre stage in several stories in the 1890s, were the chief protagonists of entertaining potboilers with little pretension to literary merit.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century the woman detective migrated from the pages of the dime novel to more respectable literature. Anna Katharine Green was the author of The Leavenworth Case, an 1878 novel which introduced the detective Ebenezer Gryce to American readers. Twenty years later, Green created Amelia Butterworth, a high-society spinster with a taste for poking her nose into other people’s misfortunes, who joined forces with Gryce to solve crimes in three novels, beginning with That Affair Next Door (1897). In 1915, nearly forty years after her first detective novel, Green published a series of short stories featuring Violet Strange, a young woman from a wealthy New York family who earns her pin money working for a detective agency. One of these is included in this anthology. Arthur B Reeve’s Constance Dunlap is another young woman who makes a living from fighting crime. Reeve is best known for creating the ‘scientific detective’ Craig Kennedy who appeared in dozens of short stories, more than twenty novels, several films and a 1950s TV series. He was a much less sophisticated writer than, say, Anna Katharine Green, and both his Craig Kennedy stories and his tales of Constance Dunlap reflect that, but they retain their charm and are full of fascinating period detail. ‘The Dope Fiends’, the story I have included in this anthology, reveals much, both consciously and unconsciously, about attitudes to drug-taking in the 1910s.

In the several anthologies I have compiled (The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Rivals of Dracula, Supernatural Sherlocks), my aim has always been to demonstrate the sheer range of entertaining short fiction that was produced in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. My purpose in putting together this volume is the same. From a palm-reading society lady (Diana Marburg) to the gypsy owner of a pawnshop (Hagar Stanley), from a Scotland Yard detective (Lady Molly) solving crimes years before women in real life were even allowed to join the police force to a nurse of genius (Hilda Wade) looking to revenge the death of her father, the female detectives of this golden age of genre fiction were a gloriously mixed bunch. I hope that readers enjoy their assorted adventures as much as I do.

DORA BELL

Created by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett (1846-1930)

A journalist who worked for the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett also wrote a number of interesting genre novels. New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future, first published in 1889, is a feminist utopia in which her heroine falls asleep in the late nineteenth century and awakes in the year 2472 to find a society in which women have control. Thanks to a technique known as ‘nerve-rejuvenation’, these ‘Amazonians’ live for hundreds of years in the prime of life and have created a fairer and less corrupt world. (Although, disconcertingly for a modern reader, they do practise a form of eugenics.) Corbett was not only a pioneer of women’s science fiction. She also published crime novels. In When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead, subtitled ‘A Thrilling Detective Story’, Annie Cory turns detective when her fiancé is falsely accused of stealing diamonds from the firm for which he works. Adopting a series of alternative identities and disguises (including cross-dressing as a man), Annie sets out to prove his innocence. The book was published in 1894. At about the same time, Corbett created another female detective in Dora Bell, an agent for the Bell & White Agency, who appeared in a series of stories published in provincial and colonial newspapers such as the Leeds Mercury and the Adelaide Observer. These do not seem to have been collected in book form although an earlier volume of stories by Corbett, Secrets of a Private Enquiry Office (1890), does include a character named Dora. The Dora Bell stories are short and uncomplicated, ideally suited to the newspaper readership at which they were aimed. They win no prizes for great originality but they remain entertaining and easy to read.

MADAME DUCHESNE’S GARDEN PARTY

‘It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.’

‘But surely, if Miss Mainwaring knows that you could not possibly have foreseen your loss, she will not be unjust enough to disinherit you?’

‘Indeed she will. She believes me to be vacillating and unreliable, because I broke off an engagement with a rich man to whom I had but given a reluctant acceptance, and united myself to the man of my choice. My husband was poor, and therefore beyond the pale of forgiveness, and my own pardon is only based on the most unswerving obedience to all my aunt’s injunctions. The pendant came from India, and the stones in it are said to possess occult power – I wish they had the power to come back to their rightful owner.’

The speaker heaved a sigh of desperation as she spoke, and I glanced at her with considerable interest. She was tall, pale, dark-eyed, and handsome, but her appearance bore certain signs of that vacillation and carelessness of which her aunt accredited her with the possession.

The circumstances surrounding the loss of which she complained were peculiar. She had been spending the evening at the house of the German Ambassador, and returning home in Miss Mainwaring’s carriage, when she became aware of the fact that she had lost the jewelled pendant which her aunt had given her as a token of reconciliation when she returned to her after being suddenly widowed.

A frantic search of the carriage bore no results, and Mrs Bevan hastily told the coachman to return to the Embassy. But she prudently refrained from confiding the particulars of her loss to him, for she was not quite without hope that it might be remedied. Madame von Auerbach was, however, able to give her no comfort, for she had herself suffered in like manner with her guest.

She had lost a valuable diamond-studded watch, and when the most careful search failed to discover it, the conclusion arrived at was that some thief must have been present at the reception. It was an unpleasant conclusion to arrive at. But it was the only natural one. For the Ambassador’s wife had not left her guests, or gone beyond the reception rooms, from the time she entered them, wearing the watch to the moment when, the last visitors having just gone, she thought of looking at her watch, and found that it had disappeared.

Mrs Bevan’s return a few moments later with the news that her pendant had disappeared, confirmed the supposition that some professional thief must have been at work, and the police were at once communicated with. They were also strictly enjoined to keep the matter a profound secret, for various reasons.

But Mrs Bevan was too anxious to rely entirely upon the exertions of the regular force, hence her application to our firm and her urgent entreaty that I would act with the utmost despatch.

Soon after my client’s departure I sought an interview with Madame von Auerbach, but could glean very little useful information. The invitations had been sent out with great care, but their exclusiveness was negatived by the fact that they were all sent to So-and-so and friend. The position of those invited by name had been considered sufficient guarantee of the perfect suitability of the friends whom they might select to accompany them to the Embassy, and at least a score of people had been present of whom the hostess barely heard even their names.

Of course, no one could treat any single one of these individuals as suspects without some definite suspicion to work upon, and, unfortunately for our prospects of success, there was not the slightest ground for suspecting anyone in particular.

I was about to quit Madame von Auerbach’s house when a servant entered with a card upon a waiter, and upon hearing that the name inscribed thereon was that of one of the guests of the previous evening, I hastily decided to stay a little longer, and requested Madame von Auerbach to keep my vocation a secret from her visitor.

The next minute a most bewitching little woman was ushered into the room.

‘Oh, my dear madame!’ she exclaimed, with a charming foreign accent. ‘Such an unfortunate thing! I lost my beautiful diamond clasp last night. Have your servants seen anything of it?’

Madame von Auerbach turned pale, and I looked with augmented interest at the harbinger of this new development of the previous evening’s mystery. The depredations had evidently been on a large scale, and the depredators had shown remarkably good taste in the choice of their spoil. The latest victim was a French lady named Madame Duchesne, and she waxed eloquent in lamentations over her loss when it was shown to her how little hope there was of recovering her diamond clasp.

‘And do you know, I feel so terribly upset,’ was her pathetic protest, ‘that I would give anything not to have had to go on with my own garden party tomorrow. And I don’t like to say it, but it is a fact I also may have included the thief in my invitation, and it would be awful if more things were to be stolen. Whatever shall I do?’

As no practical advice seemed to be forthcoming, Madame Duchesne studied for a moment, and then announced her intention of employing a detective.

‘Not a real, horrid policeman,’ she averred, ‘but one of those extraordinary individuals who seem able to look through and through you, and who can find anything out. Private detectives, I think they call them.’

Madame von Auerbach looked up eagerly, but I gave her a warning glance which caused her to postpone the revelation of my identity which she had felt prompted to make.

‘Do you know any of these people?’ was the Frenchwoman’s appeal to me. ‘Can you help me to the address of one?’

‘There are several firms of private detectives in London, if we are to judge from their advertisements,’ I answered. ‘I have heard Messrs Bell and White, of Holborn, spoken of as fairly good, but, of course, there are plenty of others equally good, or probably better.’

‘Bell and White, Holborn. Yes, I will try them. Thank you so much for helping me. May I ask if you live in London?’

Seizing my cue, Madame von Auerbach promptly came to my assistance.

‘I am very angry with Miss Gresham,’ she averred. ‘Since she resigned her post as governess to the Duke of Solothurn’s children, she has hardly deigned to take any notice of the numerous friends she made in Germany. But I mean to make her stay a few days with me, now that she has come to see me.’

‘Then you must bring her with you to my garden party,’ said Madame Duchesne, and the invitation so cleverly angled for was accepted with a faint pretence of hesitation at the idea of inflicting myself upon the hospitality of a total stranger.

After Madame Duchesne’s departure I congratulated Madame von Auerbach very warmly upon her tact and presence of mind, and arranged to visit the garden party as her friend the next day.

In due course the interesting function was in full swing, and the fascinating hostess had quite a crowd of guests to look after. My guarantor had left me, at my own request, to my own devices. I wanted to look about me, and to note all that was going on, without being too much in evidence myself.

Presently Madame Duchesne approached me with a very mysterious air, and introduced a very handsome man to my notice. ‘Don’t be shocked,’ she whispered. ‘But this is the private detective, Mr Bell. I communicated with him at once after leaving Madame von Auerbach’s yesterday, and he is here to watch that no pickpocket secures booty here. Isn’t it too dreadful to have to take such precautions? I will never give another party in London!’

I responded to this confidential communication with due sympathy, and gravely acknowledged the attention my new companion bestowed upon me for a few moments. And I had need of my gravity and presence of mind. For the man introduced to me was not my uncle, the detective. I knew that our firm had not been applied to by Madame Duchesne, in spite of her assertion to the contrary, and as this was certainly no one who had ever been in our office, I knew that certain suspicions that I had formed yesterday were likely to be verified. Since this stranger was certainly no detective, I concluded that he was merely posing as one for the sake of diverting suspicion from the offenders whom I was anxious to run to earth. The assumption that he was the associate and helpmate of the thieves was also a very natural one, although a glance at the lovely hostess and her dainty surroundings almost seemed to belie such a supposition.

But I knew that I was on the right track, and within the hour my vigilance was rewarded. The sham detective, whose pretended avocation had been disclosed to none but Madame von Auerbach and myself, sauntered from group to group, as if intent upon scrutinising their actions. His real object was to attach their jewellery, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him possess himself of a costly watch which Lady A was wearing in somewhat careless fashion. Instant denunciation was not my intention. I meant to probe the matter to the root, and followed Mr Bell’s movements with apparent nonchalance. Presently he culled a couple of beautiful standard roses, and handed them to Madame Duchesne with a graceful compliment.

The thing was beautifully done, and none but a person keenly on guard would have noticed that the watch changed hands with the roses. This little comedy over, Madame sauntered towards the house, and, five minutes later, I came upon her, quite by accident, of course, just as she was relocking a dainty cabinet from which she had taken a fresh bottle of perfume, in the use of which she was very lavish.

There were two or three other people in Madame’s charming boudoir, among them being Madame von Auerbach, by whose side I seated myself with an air of sudden weakness.

She was really startled by the development of events, but she had been previously cautioned, and played her part very well indeed, when I exclaimed that I felt dreadfully ill.

‘What shall I do?’ she cried. ‘I hope it is not one of your old attacks.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I whispered, faintly. ‘Do send for my uncle. He is the only one who can help me.’

I was promptly placed on the couch, and dosed with all sorts of amateur remedies, pending the arrival of my uncle, who had been sent for in hot haste, and who, entre nous, was waiting with a police officer in private clothes for the expected urgent summons. No sooner did they appear than my indisposition vanished, and I astonished the bystanders by springing vigorously to my feet.

‘Arrest Madame Duchesne,’ I cried, ‘and her accomplice.’ Pointing to the latter, I continued, ‘That man has stolen Lady A’s watch, and it is locked in that cabinet.’

What a scene of confusion there was immediately. Not only Lady A, but several other people discovered that they had been robbed, and the cabinet was found to contain a great quantity of stolen valuables, among them being Mrs Bevan’s much-prized pendant.

My discovery was only made in the nick of time. In another twelve hours the birds would have flown, for the real Madame Duchesne, the lady from whom they had stolen the letters of introduction which had obtained them the entree to London society, had arrived in London that day. An accomplice had warned them of the fact, and as they knew that this garden party they were giving at the gorgeous house they had hired would be their last opportunity for some time, they had determined to make a large haul and decamp that same evening.

Luckily for many people, I was able to frustrate their intention. At present they are lodging in infinitely less luxurious quarters, and several members of the upper classes are much more careful than formerly as to whom they associate with by virtue of letters of introduction.

LOVEDAY BROOKE

Created by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1839-1910)

In 1893, the same year that Conan Doyle attempted to despatch Sherlock Holmes by supposedly sending him over the Reichenbach Falls (the character was, of course, to be resurrected later), a new detective appeared in the pages of The Ludgate Monthly. Sometimes known (slightly misleadingly) as ‘the female Sherlock Holmes’, Loveday Brooke was the heroine of half a dozen stories which were subsequently gathered together in a volume entitled The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Detective. She is one of the most interesting and appealing of late Victorian female detectives. A professional who works for a Fleet Street Detective Agency, she shows resourcefulness when she is sent under cover (as she is in several of the stories) and confidence in her own ability to discover the truth about the crimes she is investigating. The character, a woman making her way successfully in a world usually the preserve of men, was created by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, the wife of a Royal Navy officer, who had taken up writing in her late thirties. Her first novel, entitled Disappeared from her Home, was published in 1877 and was followed by more than a dozen others, offering readers a mixture of melodrama, mystery and romance. She was also a regular contributor of short stories to the periodical press. After the publication of the tales of Loveday Brooke, Pirkis largely gave up writing in favour of charitable work. She and her husband were active in the anti-vivisection movement and were among the founders of the National Canine Defence League.

THE REDHILL SISTERHOOD

‘THEY want you at Redhill, now,’ said Mr Dyer, taking a packet of papers from one of his pigeon-holes. ‘The idea seems gaining ground in manly quarters that in cases of mere suspicion, women detectives are more satisfactory than men, for they are less likely to attract attention. And this Redhill affair, so far as I can make out, is one of suspicion only.’

It was a dreary November morning; every gas jet in the Lynch Court office was alight, and a yellow curtain of outside fog draped its narrow windows.

‘Nevertheless, I suppose one can’t afford to leave it uninvestigated at this season of the year, with country-house robberies beginning in so many quarters,’ said Miss Brooke.

‘No; and the circumstances in this case certainly seem to point in the direction of the country-house burglar. Two days ago a somewhat curious application was made privately, by a man giving the name of John Murray, to Inspector Gunning, of the Reigate police – Redhill, I must tell you is in the Reigate police district. Murray stated that he had been a greengrocer somewhere in South London, had sold his business there, and had, with the proceeds of the sale, bought two small houses in Redhill, intending to let the one and live in the other. These houses are situated in a blind alley, known as Paved Court, a narrow turning leading off the London and Brighton coach road. Paved Court has been known to the sanitary authorities for the past ten years as a regular fever nest, and as the houses which Murray bought – numbers 7 and 8 – stand at the very end of the blind alley, with no chance of thorough ventilation, I dare say the man got them for next to nothing. He told the Inspector that he had had great difficulty in procuring a tenant for the house he wished to let, number 8, and that consequently when, about three weeks back, a lady, dressed as a nun, made him an offer for it, he immediately closed with her. The lady gave her name simply as “Sister Monica”, and stated that she was a member of an undenominational Sisterhood that had recently been founded by a wealthy lady, who wished her name kept a secret. Sister Monica gave no references, but, instead, paid a quarter’s rent in advance, saying that she wished to take possession of the house immediately, and open it as a home for crippled orphans.’

‘Gave no references – home for cripples,’ murmured Loveday, scribbling hard and fast in her notebook.

‘Murray made no objection to this,’ continued Mr Dyer, ‘and, accordingly, the next day, Sister Monica, accompanied by three other Sisters and some sickly children, took possession of the house, which they furnished with the barest possible necessaries from cheap shops in the neighbourhood. For a time, Murray said, he thought he had secured most desirable tenants, but during the last ten days suspicions as to their real character have entered his mind, and these suspicions he thought it his duty to communicate to the police. Among their possessions, it seems, these Sisters number an old donkey and a tiny cart, and this they start daily on a sort of begging tour through the adjoining villages, bringing back every evening a perfect hoard of broken victuals and bundles of old garments. Now comes the extraordinary fact on which Murray bases his suspicions. He says, and Gunning verifies his statement, that in whatever direction those Sisters turn the wheels of their donkey-cart, burglaries, or attempts at burglaries, are sure to follow. A week ago they went along towards Horley, where, at an outlying house, they received much kindness from a wealthy gentleman. That very night an attempt was made to break into that gentleman’s house – an attempt, however, that was happily frustrated by the barking of the house-dog. And so on in other instances that I need not go into. Murray suggests that it might be as well to have the daily movements of these sisters closely watched, and that extra vigilance should be exercised by the police in the districts that have had the honour of a morning call from them. Gunning coincides with this idea, and so has sent to me to secure your services.’

Loveday closed her notebook. ‘I suppose Gunning will meet me somewhere and tell me where I’m to take up my quarters?’ she said.

‘Yes; he will get into your carriage at Merstham – the station before Redhill – if you will put your hand out of the window, with the morning paper in it. By the way, he takes it for granted that you will take the 11.05 train from Victoria. Murray, it seems, has been good enough to place his little house at the disposal of the police, but Gunning does not think espionage could be so well carried on there as from other quarters. The presence of a stranger in an alley of that sort is bound to attract attention. So he has hired a room for you in a draper’s shop that immediately faces the head of the court. There is a private door to this shop of which you will have the key, and can let yourself in and out as you please. You are supposed to be a nursery governess on the lookout for a situation, and Gunning will keep you supplied with letters to give colour to the idea. He suggests that you need only occupy the room during the day, at night you will find far more comfortable quarters at Laker’s Hotel, just outside the town.’

This was about the sum total of the instructions that Mr Dyer had to give.

The 11.05 train from Victoria, that carried Loveday to her work among the Surrey Hills, did not get clear of the London fog till well away on the other side of Purley. When the train halted at Merstham, in response to her signal a tall, soldier-like individual made for her carriage, and, jumping in, took the seat facing her. He introduced himself to her as Inspector Gunning, recalled to her memory a former occasion on which they had met, and then, naturally enough, turned the talk upon the present suspicious circumstances they were bent upon investigating.

‘It won’t do for you and me to be seen together,’ he said; ‘of course I am known for miles round, and anyone seen in my company will be at once set down as my coadjutor, and spied upon accordingly. I walked from Redhill to Merstham on purpose to avoid recognition on the platform at Redhill, and halfway here, to my great annoyance, found that I was being followed by a man in a workman’s dress and carrying a basket of tools. I doubled, however, and gave him the slip, taking a short cut down a lane which, if he had been living in the place, he would have known as well as I did. By Jove!’ this was added with a sudden start, ‘there is the fellow, I declare; he has weathered me after all, and has no doubt taken good stock of us both, with the train going at this snail’s pace. It was unfortunate that your face should have been turned towards that window, Miss Brooke.’

‘My veil is something of a disguise, and I will put on another cloak before he has a chance of seeing me again,’ said Loveday.

All she had seen in the brief glimpse that the train had allowed, was a tall, powerfully-built man walking along a siding of the line. His cap was drawn low over his eyes, and in his hand he carried a workman’s basket.

Gunning seemed much annoyed at the circumstance. ‘Instead of landing at Redhill,’ he said, ‘we’ll go on to Three Bridges and wait there for a Brighton train to bring us back, that will enable you to get to your room somewhere between the lights; I don’t want to have you spotted before you’ve so much as started your work.’

Then they went back to their discussion of the Redhill Sisterhood.

‘They call themselves “undenominational”, whatever that means,’ said Gunning. ‘They say they are connected with no religious sect whatever, they attend sometimes one place of worship, sometimes another, sometimes none at all. They refuse to give up the name of the founder of their order, and really no one has any right to demand it of them, for, as no doubt you see, up to the present moment the case is one of mere suspicion, and it may be a pure coincidence that attempts at burglary have followed their footsteps in this neighbourhood. By the way, I have heard of a man’s face being enough to hang him, but until I saw Sister Monica’s, I never saw a woman’s face that could perform the same kind office for her. Of all the lowest criminal types of faces I have ever seen, I think hers is about the lowest and most repulsive.’

After the Sisters, they passed in review the chief families resident in the neighbourhood.

‘This,’ said Gunning, unfolding a paper, ‘is a map I have specially drawn up for you – it takes in the district for ten miles round Redhill, and every country house of any importance is marked with it in red ink. Here, in addition, is an index to those houses, with special notes of my own to every house.’

Loveday studied the map for a minute or so, then turned her attention to the index.

‘Those four houses you’ve marked, I see, are those that have been already attempted. I don’t think I’ll run them through, but I’ll mark them “doubtful”; you see the gang – for, of course, it is a gang – might follow our reasoning on the matter, and look upon those houses as our weak point. Here’s one I’ll run through, “house empty during winter months”, that means plate and jewellery sent to the bankers. Oh! and this one may as well be crossed off, “father and four sons all athletes and sportsmen”, that means firearms always handy – I don’t think burglars will be likely to trouble them. Ah! now we come to something! Here’s a house to be marked “tempting” in a burglar’s list. “Wootton Hall, lately changed hands and rebuilt, with complicated passages and corridors. Splendid family plate in daily use and left entirely to the care of the butler”. I wonder, does the master of that house trust to his “complicated passages” to preserve his plate for him? A dismissed dishonest servant would supply a dozen maps of the place for half-a-sovereign. What do these initials, “EL”, against the next house in the list, North Cape, stand for?’

‘Electric lighted. I think you might almost cross that house off also. I consider electric lighting one of the greatest safeguards against burglars that a man can give his house.’

‘Yes, if he doesn’t rely exclusively upon it; it might be a nasty trap under certain circumstances. I see this gentleman also has magnificent presentation and other plate.’

‘Yes. Mr Jameson is a wealthy man and very popular in the neighbourhood; his cups and epergnes are worth looking at.’

‘Is it the only house in the district that is lighted with electricity?’

‘Yes; and, begging your pardon, Miss Brooke, I only wish it were not so. If electric lighting were generally in vogue it would save the police a lot of trouble on these dark winter nights.’

‘The burglars would find some way of meeting such a condition of things, depend upon it; they have reached a very high development in these days. They no longer stalk about as they did fifty years ago with blunderbuss and bludgeon; they plot, plan, contrive and bring imagination and artistic resource to their aid. By the way, it often occurs to me that the popular detective stories, for which there seems too large a demand at the present day, must be, at times, uncommonly useful to the criminal classes.’

At Three Bridges they had to wait so long for a return train that it was nearly dark when Loveday got back to Redhill. Mr Gunning did not accompany her thither, having alighted at a previous station. Loveday had directed her portmanteau to be sent direct to Laker’s Hotel, where she had engaged a room by telegram from Victoria Station. So, unburthened by luggage, she slipped quietly out of the Redhill Station and made her way straight for the draper’s shop in the London Road. She had no difficulty in finding it, thanks to the minute directions given her by the Inspector.

Street lamps were being lighted in the sleepy little town as she went along, and as she turned into the London Road, shopkeepers were lighting up their windows on both sides of the way. A few yards down this road, a dark patch between the lighted shops showed her where Paved Court led off from the thoroughfare. A side door of one of the shops that stood at the corner of the court seemed to offer a post of observation whence she could see without being seen, and here Loveday, shrinking into the shadows, ensconced herself in order to take stock of the little alley and its inhabitants. She found it much as it had been described to her – a collection of four-roomed houses of which more than half were unlet. Numbers 7 and 8 at the head of the court presented a slightly less neglected appearance than the other tenements. Number 7 stood in total darkness, but in the upper window of number 8 there showed what seemed to be a night-light burning, so Loveday conjectured that this possibly was the room set apart as a dormitory for the little cripples.

While she stood thus surveying the home of the suspected Sisterhood, the Sisters themselves – two, at least, of them – came into view, with their donkey-cart and their cripples, in the main road. It was an odd little cortège. One Sister, habited in a nun’s dress of dark blue serge, led the donkey by the bridle; another Sister, similarly attired, walked alongside the low cart, in which were seated two sickly-looking children. They were evidently returning from one of their long country circuits, and unless they had lost their way and been belated, it certainly seemed a late hour for the sickly little cripples to be abroad.

As they passed under the gas lamp at the corner of the court, Loveday caught a glimpse of the faces of the Sisters. It was easy, with Inspector Gunning’s description before her mind, to identify the older and taller woman as Sister Monica, and a more coarse-featured and generally repellent face Loveday admitted to herself she had never before seen. In striking contrast to this forbidding countenance, was that of the younger Sister. Loveday could only catch a brief passing view of it, but that one brief view was enough to impress it on her memory as of unusual sadness and beauty. As the donkey stopped at the corner of the court, Loveday heard this sad-looking young woman addressed as ‘Sister Anna’ by one of the cripples, who asked plaintively when they were going to have something to eat.

‘Now, at once,’ said Sister Anna, lifting the little one, as it seemed to Loveday, tenderly out of the cart, and carrying him on her shoulder down the court to the door of number 8, which opened to them at their approach. The other Sister did the same with the other child; then both Sisters returned, unloaded the cart of sundry bundles and baskets, and, this done, led off the old donkey and trap down the road, possibly to a neighbouring costermonger’s stables.

A man, coming along on a bicycle, exchanged a word of greeting with the Sisters as they passed, then swung himself off his machine at the corner of the court, and walked it along the paved way to the door of number 7. This he opened with a key, and then, pushing the machine before him, entered the house.

Loveday took it for granted that this man must be the John Murray of whom she had heard. She had closely scrutinised him as he had passed her, and had seen that he was a dark, well-featured man of about fifty years of age.

She congratulated herself on her good fortune in having seen so much in such a brief space of time, and coming forth from her sheltered corner turned her steps in the direction of the draper’s shop on the other side of the road.

It was easy to find it. ‘Golightly’ was the singular name that figured above the shopfront, in which were displayed a variety of goods calculated to meet the wants of servants and the poorer classes generally. A tall, powerfully-built man appeared to be looking in at this window. Loveday’s foot was on the doorstep of the draper’s private entrance, her hand on the door-knocker, when this individual, suddenly turning, convinced her of his identity with the journeyman workman who had so disturbed Mr Gunning’s equanimity. It was true he wore a bowler instead of a journeyman’s cap, and he no longer carried a basket of tools, but there was no possibility for anyone, with so good an eye for an outline as Loveday possessed, not to recognise the carriage of the head and shoulders as that of the man she had seen walking along the railway siding. He gave her no time to make minute observation of his appearance, but turned quickly away, and disappeared down a by-street.

Loveday’s work seemed to bristle with difficulties now. Here was she, as it were, unearthed in her own ambush; for there could be but little doubt that during the whole time she had stood watching those Sisters, that man, from a safe vantage point, had been watching her.

She found Mrs Golightly a civil and obliging person. She showed Loveday to her room above the shop, brought her the letters which Inspector Gunning had been careful to have posted to her during the day. Then she supplied her with pen and ink and, in response to Loveday’s request, with some strong coffee that she said, with a little attempt at a joke, would ‘keep a dormouse awake all through the winter without winking’.

While the obliging landlady busied herself about the room, Loveday had a few questions to ask about the Sisterhood who lived down the court opposite. On this head, however, Mrs Golightly could tell her no more than she already knew, beyond the fact that they started every morning on their rounds at eleven o’clock punctually, and that before that hour they were never to be seen outside their door.

Loveday’s watch that night was to be a fruitless one. Although she sat, with her lamp turned out and safely screened from observation, until close upon midnight, with eyes fixed upon numbers 7 and 8 Paved Court, not so much as a door opening or shutting at either house rewarded her vigil. The lights flitted from the lower to the upper floors in both houses, and then disappeared somewhere between nine and ten in the evening; and after that, not a sign of life did either tenement show.

And all through the long hours of that watch, backwards and forwards there seemed to flit before her mind’s eye, as if in some sort it were fixed upon its retina, the sweet, sad face of Sister Anna. Why it was this face should so haunt her, she found it hard to say.

‘It has a mournful past and a mournful future written upon it as a hopeless whole,’ she said to herself. ‘It is the face of an Andromeda! “Here am I,” it seems to say, “tied to my stake, helpless and hopeless.”’

The church clocks were sounding the midnight hour as Loveday made her way through the dark streets to her hotel outside the town. As she passed under the railway arch that ended in the open country road, the echo of not very distant footsteps caught her ear. When she stopped they stopped, when she went on they went on, and she knew that once more she was being followed and watched, although the darkness of the arch prevented her seeing even the shadow of the man who was thus dogging her steps.

The next morning broke keen and frosty. Loveday studied her map and her country-house index over a seven o’clock breakfast, and then set off for a brisk walk along the country road. No doubt in London the streets were walled in and roofed with yellow fog; here, however, bright sunshine played in and out of the bare tree-boughs and leafless hedges on to a thousand frost spangles, turning the prosaic macadamised road into a gangway fit for Queen Titania herself and her fairy train.

Loveday turned her back on the town and set herself to follow the road as it wound away over the hill in the direction of a village called Northfield. Early as she was, she was not to have that road to herself. A team of strong horses trudged by on their way to their work in the fuller’s-earth pits. A young fellow on a bicycle flashed past at a tremendous pace, considering the upward slant of the road. He looked hard at her as he passed, then slackened pace, dismounted, and awaited her coming on the brow of the hill.

‘Good morning, Miss Brooke,’ he said, lifting his cap as she came alongside of him. ‘May I have five minutes’ talk with you?’

The young man who thus accosted her had not the appearance of a gentleman. He was a handsome, bright-faced young fellow of about two-and-twenty, and was dressed in ordinary cyclists’ dress; his cap was pushed back from his brow over thick, curly, fair hair, and Loveday, as she looked at him, could not repress the thought how well he would look at the head of a troop of cavalry, giving the order to charge the enemy.

He led his machine to the side of the footpath.

‘You have the advantage of me,’ said Loveday; ‘I haven’t the remotest notion who you are.’

‘No,’ he said; ‘although I know you, you cannot possibly know me. I am a north countryman, and I was present, about a month ago, at the trial of old Mr Craven, of Troyte’s Hill – in fact, I acted as reporter for one of the local papers. I watched your face so closely as you gave your evidence that I should know it anywhere, among a thousand.’

‘And your name is – ?’

‘George White, of Grenfell. My father is part proprietor of one of the Newcastle papers. I am a bit of a literary man myself, and sometimes figure as a reporter, sometimes as leader-writer, to that paper.’ Here he gave a glance towards his side pocket, from which protruded a small volume of Tennyson’s poems.

The facts he had stated did not seem to invite comment, and Loveday ejaculated merely:

‘Indeed!’

The young man went back to the subject that was evidently filling his thoughts. ‘I have special reasons for being glad to have met you this morning, Miss Brooke,’ he went on, making his footsteps keep pace with hers. ‘I am in great trouble, and I believe you are the only person in the whole world who can help me out of that trouble.’

‘I am rather doubtful as to my power of helping anyone out of trouble,’ said Loveday; ‘so far as my experience goes, our troubles are as much a part of ourselves as our skins are of our bodies.’

‘Ah, but not such trouble as mine,’ said White eagerly. He broke off for a moment, then, with a sudden rush of words, told her what that trouble was. For the past year he had been engaged to be married to a young girl, who, until quite recently had been fulfilling the duties of a nursery governess in a large house in the neighbourhood of Redhill.

‘Will you kindly give me the name of that house?’ interrupted Loveday.

‘Certainly; Wootton Hall, the place is called, and Annie Lee is my sweetheart’s name. I don’t care who knows it!’ He threw his head back as he said this, as if he would be delighted to announce the fact to the whole world. ‘Annie’s mother,’ he went on, ‘died when she was a baby, and we both thought her father was dead also, when suddenly, about a fortnight ago, it came to her knowledge that instead of being dead, he was serving his time at Portland for some offence committed years ago.’

‘Do you know how this came to Annie’s knowledge?’

‘Not the least in the world; I only know that I suddenly got a letter from her announcing the fact, and at the same time, breaking off her engagement with me. I tore the letter into a thousand pieces, and wrote back saying I would not allow the engagement to be broken off, but would marry her tomorrow if she would have me. To this letter she did not reply; there came instead a few lines from Mrs Copeland, the lady at Wootton Hall, saying that Annie had thrown up her engagement and joined some Sisterhood, and that she, Mrs Copeland, had pledged her word to Annie to reveal to no one the name and whereabouts of that Sisterhood.’

‘And I suppose you imagine I am able to do what Mrs Copeland is pledged not to do?’

‘That’s just it, Miss Brooke,’ cried the young man enthusiastically. ‘You do such wonderful things; everyone knows you do. It seems as if, when anything is wanted to be found out, you just walk into a place, look round you and, in a moment, everything becomes clear as noonday.’

‘I can’t quite lay claim to such wonderful powers as that. As it happens, however, in the present instance, no particular skill is needed to find out what you wish to know, for I fancy I have already come upon the traces of Miss Annie Lee.’

‘Miss Brooke!’

‘Of course, I cannot say for certain, but it is a matter you can easily settle for yourself – settle, too, in a way that will confer a great obligation on me.’

‘I shall be only too delighted to be of any – the slightest service to you,’ cried White, enthusiastically as before.

‘Thank you. I will explain. I came down here specially to watch the movements of a certain Sisterhood who have somehow aroused the suspicions of the police. Well, I find that instead of being able to do this, I am myself so closely watched – possibly by confederates of these Sisters – that unless I can do my work by deputy I may as well go back to town at once.’

‘Ah! I see – you want me to be that deputy.’

‘Precisely. I want you to go to the room in Redhill that I have hired, take your place at the window – screened, of course, from observation – at which I ought to be seated – watch as closely as possible the movements of these Sisters and report them to me at the hotel, where I shall remain shut in from morning till night – it is the only way in which I can throw my persistent spies off the scent. Now, in doing this for me, you will be also doing yourself a good turn, for I have little doubt but that under the blue serge hood of one of the sisters you will discover the pretty face of Miss Annie Lee.’

As they had talked they had walked, and now stood on the top of the hill at the head of the one little street that constituted the whole of the village of Northfield.

On their left hand stood the village schools and the master’s house; nearly facing these, on the opposite side of the road, beneath a clump of elms, stood the village pound. Beyond this pound, on either side of the way, were two rows of small cottages with tiny squares of garden in front, and in the midst of these small cottages a swinging sign beneath a lamp announced a ‘Postal and Telegraph Office’.

‘Now that we have come into the land of habitations again,’ said Loveday, ‘it will be best for us to part. It will not do for you and me to be seen together, or my spies will be transferring their attentions from me to you, and I shall have to find another deputy. You had better start on your bicycle for Redhill at once, and I will walk back at leisurely speed. Come to me at my hotel without fail at one o’clock and report proceedings. I do not say anything definite about remuneration, but I assure you, if you carry out my instructions to the letter, your services will be amply rewarded by me and by my employers.’

There were yet a few more details to arrange. White had been, he said, only a day and night in the neighbourhood, and special directions as to the locality had to be given to him. Loveday advised him not to attract attention by going to the draper’s private door, but to enter the shop as if he were a customer, and then explain matters to Mrs Golightly, who, no doubt, would be in her place behind the counter; tell her he was the brother of the Miss Smith who had hired her room, and ask permission to go through the shop to that room, as he had been commissioned by his sister to read and answer any letters that might have arrived there for her.

‘Show her the key of the side door – here it is,’ said Loveday; ‘it will be your credentials, and tell her you did not like to make use of it without acquainting her with the fact.’

The young man took the key, endeavoured to put it in his waistcoat pocket, found the space there occupied and so transferred it to the keeping of a side pocket in his tunic.

All this time Loveday stood watching him.

‘You have a capital machine there,’ she said, as the young man mounted his bicycle once more, ‘and I hope you will turn it to account in following the movements of these Sisters about the neighbourhood. I feel confident you will have something definite to tell me when you bring me your first report at one o’clock.’

White once more broke into a profusion of thanks, and then, lifting his cap to the lady, started his machine at a fairly good pace.

Loveday watched him out of sight down the slope of the hill, then, instead of following him as she had said she would ‘at a leisurely pace’, she turned her steps in the opposite direction along the village street.