Chapter 3
In which women deal with secrets.
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As a cold grey rain thumped down outside, Ellis B. Wilde was sat in a small office at the London Museum, wondering what the bloody hell was a Government Ministry rental-van doing breaking into a national museum in the middle of the night, only to dump a pile of boxes containing a large assortment of ancient British military uniforms and ancillary artefacts? Ellis replaced the old desk-phone back onto its receiver, chewed her pencil and stared at the wall with narrowed eyes. Getting the image of the licence plate nice and clear had been a breeze; she had more tricks and techniques up her sleeve when it came to cleaning up old images than anyone else she knew, and once she had the van's number, and, after calling in the necessary favour from one of her police friends, it had only been a question of contacting the identified rental agency and asking the right people the right questions. Spinning the tale that the van had dropped off some stuff from a different museum collection and there might have been an item left in the van, it was literally child's play to have everyone bending over backwards to assist. There was something noble associated with history that any Brit automatically felt compelled to respect it and Ellis hadn't the slightest compunction in exploiting the fact to her benefit.
Thus, the getting of the licence number and the trace of said number to a London van-rental firm had been a fairly simple task. It was a plain white Ford rental van, hired by the day; anyone could have done it. When she spoke to the young-sounding woman at the van-rental end of the phone, worriedly, and with the faintest note of dire anxiety in her voice, Ellis had continued the same story, though this time intimating her job might be on the line because of it. She never actually said anything specifically, but hinted at implied, though unspoken consequences. Apparently, though, the van was already out on another job, having been cleaned out thoroughly in the interim. There was no way anything could have been left in the van from a previous delivery, and even if this could have happened, all found items were immediately delivered to the main office where they were kept safe until collected.
Ellis found herself hastily revising the story. "Oh, please tell me where the artefacts were picked up," she allowed her voice to grow a little more helpless. "If the van doesn't have anything in it, then any missing item has to be somewhere at the place where the delivery was loaded," she added. "I don't need to know any details other than the actual government office where the boxes were loaded so I can contact them and have them double-check nothing was left behind," she begged plaintively. "You have no idea how important it is for me to put this problem to rest."
"It wasn't actually a government ministry that booked the van out," there was the sound of papers being lifted and turned over at the other end of the phone as the woman seemed more than willing to help as far as she was able. "It was booked out to a private account but at a government address," she went on. "So the place where the cargo was loaded was probably the Ministry site, though the whole rental was paid for from a non-government account, and that's all I can tell you, I'm afraid."
"Can you give me the name of the private account?" Ellis realised she must have a hopeful expression on her face which, of course, the woman at the other end of the conversation couldn't possibly see. "Can you give me anything else at all? This is really very important or I wouldn't be bothering you about it."
"Sorry," Ellis sensed she'd probably got all the information she was likely to get from this source. "Customer privacy," the woman said. "I'm just not able to give out such details for obvious reasons ..." there was a slight pause. "I can tell you that the contact address is in Whitehall, if that's any help, though I can't give you any more than that, sorry."
Thanking the woman for the information, she had been able to provide, Ellis slumped back into her seat, arms folded tightly across her chest and a distinctly frustrated cast to her features. So she couldn't get any more information about that end of the situation; Whitehall was an enormous place, with government departments and offices and ministries dotted all over the place. It was a needle in a haystack of needles. Folding her arms tighter, Ellis chewed her bottom lip and realised the only other option was a thorough investigation of the items themselves in the hope they'd yield at least some information that might lead to the donor.
It had eventually been a morning of some discovery, but not before a certain amount of quiet fuming and distracted hair-pulling had taken place. It was still raining and icy-cold outside though by now, Ellis had located herself in the London Museum's first-floor ladies toilet hanging half-out of a very small window, smoking a very surreptitious cigarette. An indicator of extreme frustration. The investigation was going nowhere at all and while she might indulge in three or four cigarettes a year. This was her second in as many hours. Nor was she actually enjoying it very much, truth be told, her short angry puffs far more irritation than relaxation. Stubbing out the half-smoked Rothman's and flushing the remains down the nearest toilet, she washed her hands to rid the skin of any residual smell, finally looking at her own reflection in one of the large, square mirrors.
She was too pale, she realised, as she dragged fingers through thick hair which, she noticed, needed a proper cut soon. Heavy waves coiled just at her shoulders, a scarcely-controlled mass of golden-copper sweeping down over two refined eyebrows of the same shade. Make-up wouldn't be much help either; she wrinkled her nose at her reflection. Her skin was so light and fine she could see the blue of veins at her throat that even the lightest of cosmetics could not cover without standing out like a beacon. The best she could get away with was a dusting of translucent powder, the merest touch of pink blush at her cheekbones and a translucent mid-rose on her lips. Her eyes were the colour of well-faded denim framed by artificially darkened lashes. She spent far too many days and weeks huddled inside big dark buildings, dissecting old things, breathing old air, thinking old thoughts. She needed a holiday, Ellis realised, noticing a smudge of dirt at her jaw, rubbing at it with her clean fingers. But that wouldn't be for a while; she had far too many obligations to deal with first. Perhaps when the weather became a little warmer she could find somewhere to browse through old castles; maybe find a nice old pub on one of the moors and spend a few days out walking. Maybe.
Disciplining her thoughts back into the present, Ellis walked back to the great conundrum which had begun to get intensely irritating. While she'd been able to get a closer though not a terribly productive encounter with several items from the anonymous bequest of military costumes, she'd still found nothing to help establish their provenance, or even a lead she might chase further.
Following the unhelpful van-rental lead, the day had improved a little, with Ron Oliver agreeing she could conduct an initial review of one of the boxes of uniforms, just so there was an external expert's opinion that could be added to whatever the museum would eventually settle on as being the true and accurate story of these venerable pieces of military history. Selecting a box that appeared to be mostly outer coats and uniform jackets since such items generally originated with better identifying labels, Ellis took over one of the museum's two clean-rooms where a huge under-lit central table dominated the otherwise mostly empty space. Everything was white in here; the floor, table, chairs, walls and ceiling. Even the lights, though carefully configured to emit a softer brilliance than in the rest of the offices, provided a clear, pearlised brightness. This was to ensure that nothing brought into the room could ever be accidently left behind. The smallest thread remnant stood out hugely against the clinical white glow of the space and even more so when laid out on the crisp glassy brightness of the table.
Donning a pair of white cotton gloves, and with her notebook, camera, bag of tools and microscope over on a side bench, Ellis felt she was good to go. Lifting up the cardboard flaps to look inside the box, the first thing she noticed was the smell. Not unpleasant, but dusty, with an old and vaguely herbal scent. Thyme? Rosemary? Something reminiscent of timeworn cedar wardrobes and the fragrance of dried petals laid in drawers of keepsakes. There was also ... and her eyebrows rose a little at this ... the faintest burnt tang of gunpowder. Sniffing around the cuffs of the greatcoat which she'd laid out flat on the table, it was plain to see that not only had this item been well worn, but it had likely seen battlefield action. How fabulous. Which campaign might it have been?
Laying out the remaining several pieces of clothing side-by-side across the long table, several things became immediately clear. All these articles had been made either for the same man or for a group of men who shared a very similar body-shape. Judging by the width of shoulder, narrowness of waist and length of drape, Ellis estimated these items were all made for a man somewhere a little over six feet tall, with a reasonably slim overall shape. All the items would have cost a great deal of money at the time and … most interestingly, each of the garments were from different times. The chest measurement of the coat was between forty-two and forty-four inches, and the arms were also fairly long, suggesting a body with a natural overall length, rather than a man with a more stocky torso and long legs. So; a tall, slim man, or men, commissioning bespoke clothing over a period of … Ellis looked across all the items with a practised eye. The oldest jacket, giving at the seams and with the fabric already showing indications of organic deterioration and moth infestation looked to be from the early eighteenth century, 1710 or 1720 perhaps, yet the greatcoat was later, at least mid-Victorian. Clearly, whoever commissioned these garments had significant wealth behind them; the quality of even the hidden internal stitching was exquisite.
A wealthy family perhaps? A large family of many sons? That wouldn't be uncommon, though usually only the eldest son of wealthy families entered the army. But if so, then why were most of these uniforms of different times? Different military campaigns? Why not have several iterations of the same item for the whole family? It dawned on Ellis that this wasn't merely a collection of antique clothing; it was turning into a generational collection of clothing. So then; a family of great wealth, a wealth that had been around for several hundreds of years with the family closely connected to the British army for a very long time. There had to be a name in here somewhere; this kind of long-term familial connection to the army simply had to be recorded. Running a list of major landed families through her head, she tried to work out if any one of them had a continuous line of elder sons participating in a near-constant military service. There were the Andrews, the Elliots, the Caprons ... she'd need to go through Burke's Landed Gentry and probably the Almanach de Gotha to find out all the possible potential families, though that wouldn't help her much right now.
Perhaps if she looked at it from the other direction? Running the litany of British military campaigns through her mind, Ellis realised that on this table alone, there were items covering a timeframe that stretched from the Anglo-Spanish Wars of the early 1700s, right up to the Crimean which ended in 1856; she shook her head, perplexed. It was beginning to seem as if she was looking at a collection from another British military museum collection, but nobody on any grapevine had mentioned any collection, new or old suddenly being available, not had there been anything in the papers about any National Trust property being robbed. This was so deeply strange she wasn't sure what to think any more. It was a proper mystery.
In order to be able to afford all these hand-made garments, there had to be some serious money, wherever it came from, as all the garments had obviously been designed and made by the very best craftspeople. Were there any maker's marks? Ellis opened the more recent greatcoat and looked at the inside seams and inner pockets, running her fingers carefully up and along each seam, each pocket. There was nothing obvious to be seen; no tags, no ownership marks, no labels of commission, though the fingertips of her gloves brushed across a number of cut black threads inside the coat's collar where there had clearly been a label, though it had recently been removed. How entirely curious; not only was the unknown benefactor determined to remain completely anonymous, but they had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure no name could possibly be connected to any of these items.
Rubbing the small square area of the wool fabric inside the coat's collar, she could see there was a slightly rougher, unworn patch where the label had sat for over one-hundred-and-fifty years. She checked the pockets, but there was nothing in any of them save dust and a few heads of dried lavender, which went some way to explaining the scent she'd noticed at the beginning. A natural moth-deterrent, people used to lay great sheaves of dried lavender among their linens and clothing presses for exactly that purpose. Perhaps she'd have better luck with one of the more uniformed jackets, though at a quick glance at the bare patched and snipped threads, it seemed they had suffered a similar fate to the coat and all were sans nom.
The garment next to the greatcoat was a fine Mess Dress jacket, circa 1800 and exquisitely tailored and sewn, the ornamental gold thread of the chest frogging still cohesive and glittering. This looked to be a little earlier than the greatcoat and sang to her instincts as something that might have seen the Continent, rather than dwelling solely on British soil. It had all the hallmarks of the British officer abroad; the finest quality wool, the red dye still rich and vibrant, and looked as though it had never seen the daylight, the colour was so intense. The seams, originally sewn with pure silk, were giving badly and the entire garment looked in imminent danger of complete structural breakdown, and yet it was such a beautiful jacket. Such a gorgeous piece of crafted skill; it would take some doing, but the seams could all be re-sewn, bring the garment back to its former glory. The raised curve of the two central chest panels dropped in a smooth arc as the tailcoat swooped down over the hips, fitting snugly around and lower down at the back. Three gilt buttons at the front. It simply shouted Napoleonic era.
The immaculate and delicate stitching, the excess of gold braid, the additional glamour, all pointing to the livery of a senior officer. Not a General, not quite grand enough, nor yet a Brigadier-general, but not much lower. Lieutenant-Colonel looked about right; something with authority but not at the highest level. Ellis traced the heavy gold braids around the bright red cuff and abbreviated straight collar. This would have been worn over a waistcoat and a fine white linen shirt, cut away to show a cummerbund beneath, perhaps. This was long before the modern tie was invented so a black silk cravat would have been carefully knotted at the wearer's throat, the ends tucked inside the cream or off-white waistcoat. Closing her eyes, Ellis tried to imagine the owner of the jacket. A tall man with a determined military stance; tall and with a deceptively lean physique. He might be blond or brunet or have wavy hair the colour of midnight, but he would have been handsome, she fancied. Tall, dark and handsome.
Shaking her head and smiling at her mild fantasy, Ellis folded her arms and looked broody as she stared back at the five garments spread out in front of her. There was a big secret here that none of them were willing to share, and it annoyed her. Each of these items was very old and had obviously been kept somewhere safe between the time they were last worn and the night they were dumped outside the museum's back door. They were costly and precious pieces of clothing; not something anyone who had looked after them for a few hundred years would easily discard, let alone treat as rubbish to be simply thrown away. That they all seemed made to fit a very particular body-shape was confusing; either they were made for a single man, which of course, was impossible, or they were made for several generations of men with similar physiques; generations of the same wealthy family looked like being the most reasonable option. But if so, them why would any family, especially a wealthy family, choose to discard what must be a great portion of intimate family history? Why keep all these wonderful things for so long, only to dump them the way these things had been dumped? It made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
It was at this point of rising exasperation that Ellis had stomped off to the first-floor ladies and a clandestine and deeply illicit smoke. But neither of the two hastily-puffed ciggies did the slightest bit of good. Narrowing her eyes and scowling in frustration, Ellis abandoned her mirror-gazing and left the toilets to go in search of Ron. One box of the strange collection was simply not going to be sufficient for her to form any reliable opinion of anything, and she promised herself to keep looking until she had at least some answers to all the questions circling around in her brain. It was only after the Senior Curator had smiled, given her carte blanche and told her to go ahead and do whatever she felt best, that Ellis remembered the box of hats. It was one of the larger boxes, but hardly heavy and she had it loaded up onto an industrial dolly and wheeled along to the white room in a jiffy.
Moving the coat and the jackets carefully down to one end of the long table, Ellis opened the flaps of the large box and with extraordinarily gentle fingers, brought out each of the fourteen items of military headgear contained within. The black felt cocked hat with the faded red rosette was laid on the top, but nobody had had the time to look inside any further. Instantly identifiable as she brought them carefully out into the light, there were several army shakos of differing venerability; two dusty old bicorns that had definitely seen better days; another cockaded tricorn; two hand-blocked plain black felt bicorns and, most strange of all, a solitary Polish tzapka. All had been worn. All were showing advanced signs of general organic deterioration, where the leather-lined felted wool had simply begun to disintegrate back into dust; there was a limit how long these things could survive outside of an Argon gas-filled display case.
Examining each piece of headgear in the greatest detail, from the oldest to the most recent, Ellis sought any kind of hint as to where each one was made. As with the coat and jackets, each of these had been expensive purchases in their time; of the highest quality and craftsmanship. Amazingly, and again, as with the garments, each bespoke hat appeared to have been made for a single-sized head, the inner circumference of each being precisely twenty-two and one-eighth of an inch in every case, though this was not an uncommon measurement for men's heads, it was still a little odd. Even between brothers of the same family, head sizes usually differed a little. And there was still no sign of a maker's mark or Cutter's label. Ellis felt her scowl return as a small ripple of bad temper ruffled her usual calm. Picking up what looked to be the most recently made example, one of the plain black bicorns, Ellis peered inside, running her fingertips in and around the leather-banded inner brim but there was nothing. Tempted to give up the exploration, she looked at the fine but relatively solid inner band of lovingly tanned leather and noticed a small section of stitching had begun to come away; not unusual in the least, given the antiquated nature of all of these items. Inserting a finger into the sagging headband, she cautiously tugged the stitching a little further into disrepair, trying to look inside to see if there might be anything beneath it.
There was.
The merest corner of light silk came into view, and there was only one reason a piece of light-coloured silk would be fixed to the inside of any hat. Reaching over for her small bag of tools, Ellis pulled out a tiny pair of rounded-end scissors of the sort children might use without harming themselves. Angling the softened points of the scissors inside the sewn band, she snipped gingerly away at a row of minute black stitches until there was a gap of almost three inches, enough for her to pull the inner band down and look beneath. Lifting a small steel torch to illuminate what she wanted to see, Ellis realised she'd just had her first major break; there was a maker's label sewn into the hat but beneath the headband. She had never seen this done before, but if there was one thing she knew about the work she did in historical research, it was that there was a surprise around every corner. As the full nature of the newly-exposed label became clear, Ellis felt her heartrate increase.
In faint red letters on a small white silk square, stained yellow with dirt and age, the name of HAWKES Ltd., 17 Piccadilly, London, were still clear enough to read. Thomas Hawkes, one hundred years before his company was bought out and joined with that of James Gieve to become one of London's most fashionable and expensive military tailors.
Most importantly of all, of course, was that Gieves and Hawkes still had all their original books of account; every single order and transaction since Hawkes was founded in 1771. Grinning for the first time, Ellis knew the hat could probably be traced to an original order. Lifting up the other black bicorn, she located the same place of the stitched headband and carefully cut three stitches; just sufficient to see if there might be a second label in the same place.
There was. In fact this time, there were two of them
The same red-lettered Hawkes label, and a second, smaller label beside it with a word written in dark, though very faded ink, the writing so faint now, that only the first letter, a capital H was clearly visible. The last letter of the word might also be an S. Was this another Hawkes label? But if so, why put two of them together? That made little sense. Most likely, it was the client's order-name. So now, there was a maker's name, a possible client-name and an approximate date. Thomas Hawkes operated out of 17 Piccadilly between 1793 and 1809, at which point the company became Hawkes & Co. Ltd. After Thomas received his first Royal Warrant from George the Third. That there was a potential client-name beginning with H and ending in S made everything all the more exciting. It was a rather unexpected breakthrough that she was determined to explore.
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He could have interviewed them all, of course, but Mycroft really only wanted to speak to the dark-eyed young woman. As well as having a first-class mind, or so her university transcripts suggested, she was very beautiful, though young beauty was not necessarily a thing he valued for its own sake. Yet others would; and the number of indiscretions a man might make when faced with a lovely woman were legend. In his role, Mycroft had long since learned that no weapon or tool might be considered too lowly if it got the job done quickly and without violence. Not that he shirked from violence per se, it simply took too much effort and clean-up time to be considered anything other than an alternative of last-resort. No, far better to have things happen ... naturally, to be offered information through a desire to impress, and who better to impress but a very pretty girl with eyes the colour of melted chocolate and a mouth for which angels might fall into sin.
He was more interested in what lay behind the molten gaze and the devilish pout. As well as a clever brain, did the young woman have what it took to handle the role for which she was now being considered?
"Tell me about your family, Ms Worthington," he prompted easily. "I see you were raised by foster-parents. Why so?"
"I never knew my father and my mother died young," the dark-eyed candidate linked her fingers in her lap and met his gaze with an openness that in itself was beguiling. "My foster parents are kind people, but they had their own children to look after and I never really fitted in entirely. I think we were all relieved when I won the scholarship to St Andrews," she shrugged. "I've not done more than pop in occasionally since I graduated from my Masters last year."
"Applied Linguistics," Mycroft didn't need to check the form; he already knew everything of importance about her. "Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and ..." he looked as if he were trying to remember the last one, though she could see he was shamming. He wanted to make her jump in with an answer.
She smiled, widened her eyes fractionally and waited.
"And Hindi," his gaze settled. "Interesting choices."
"Strategic choices," she said. "I'll need them all where I'm going."
"Which would be ..?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow lazily. She was interesting, this one.
"The top," her smile was genuine and unforced. She meant it.
He smiled too. "And when you get there," he murmured. "Is anyone likely to be waiting?" he asked. "A close, personal friend, perhaps?"
Crossing her legs and smiling again, though this time with the slightest glint of sharpness to her expression. "I have had several close, personal friends," she nodded equitably. "Though none I'd expect to wait for me; certainly none who would arrive there before I did," she raised an eyebrow of her own.
Mycroft felt the desire to laugh. For someone so very young, this one had a fire in her veins, he could feel it. Smart, clever, thorough, ambitious and, not that it needed to be said, a physical asset as well. "And how do you feel about danger?" he said. "Personal danger; physical, emotional?"
"I wouldn't go looking for it, though there are few things in this life that don't harbour some kind of danger," she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing a little. "Can you be more specific?"
"Yes," Mycroft pulled open the top drawer of his desk. "This kind of danger, for instance," he said, laying down a nineteen millimetre SIG, its nozzle pointing, quite incidentally, towards her heart.
Her eyebrows rising in concert this time, she sat back in her chair and pursed her lips, eyes fixed on the sizeable black pistol. "It looks heavy," she said, thoughtfully. "If that one's for me, I'd like to see if there's something a little lighter, possibly."
Mycroft allowed the corners of his mouth to curl up a touch. "I keep this one to frighten people who might benefit from being frightened," he said, sliding the weapon back into the drawer. "I'd arrange something far less obtrusive for your use," he nodded thoughtfully. "How do you feel about Wagner?"
"The actor or the composer?" there was more than a hint of laughter in her question. "Either is okay, though I draw the line at the Ring Cycle," she squinted one eye closed. "Too much of a good thing and all that."
"And how do you feel about keeping secrets?" Mycroft watched her carefully now; much depended on her response.
"About the actor or the composer?" she asked again leaning forward, her voice dropping low and quiet, her eyes intelligent, focused and wary.
Perfect. She was perfect. "How soon can you join the team?" Mycroft rested his hands on the desk in front of him. "I need to fill this role quickly."
Leaning back in her seat again, Andrea Worthington nodded in acknowledgement of the situation. "I'm free now," she said. "Though I'd appreciate a cup of tea first, if possible."
Mycroft smiled. Perfect.
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Kitta Penderic sat at the kitchen table in the Pall Mall house … her kitchen table after all these years, and sipped hot tea from a fine porcelain cup. Despite the foulness of the day beyond the walls, the house itself was warm and quiet and comforting. Arrayed before her on the white-scrubbed old wood were a series of small boxes, each one bearing an unusual name. But she had been a nurse for a very long time and knew precisely what each one did; the beta blockers, the calcium channel blockers, the ACE inhibitors. Sighing, she opened a box labelled Ranolazine and laid out a tablet in front of her, to which she added a selection of others. Looking down, Kit frowned. She was going to need more tea.
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Wading through a seemingly endless river of paperwork, things to be read, things to be signed, things to be read, signed and then counter-signed by someone else; Andrea Worthington kept her glow of satisfaction under tight control. Elated to have won the job she'd worked so hard to get, a small amount of pleasure wouldn't seem amiss, but the level of consummate gratification fizzing through her brain right at this moment had to be utterly contained lest it alert anyone by its sheer unbounded exuberance. She had worked incredibly hard to find this job, to be in the right place, at the right time and with the right kind of qualifications and approach to be considered suitable; the planning alone had taken her years.
She signed the Official Secrets Act and smiled as she added the single page onto the 'Done' pile. Now that she'd passed the final test, had been accepted and even welcomed into the fold by her new and, she had to admit, her somewhat intriguing boss, there was only one more thing she needed to do.
Sitting back and accepting a proffered cup of tea with heartfelt thanks, her mind was already gearing up for the next challenge, the ultimate outcome of this entire project. What would be the best way to kill Mycroft Holmes?