Finally, I had the time to sit down and finish this part of the story. I thank you all so much for your kind words and for your patience. Things are still not quite back to normal, but they are getting there.

So, I hope you enjoy this update and please read and review.

Love

Nic

Me thinks the lady absent – Part 5

Harriet:

"Will you pay them the money?" Hopkins asked his Lordship.

With some mortification, the man admitted that such an amount was not to be had at so short a notice.

"I could, of course, borrow the money, I have friends enough who would do so and who would have it at their disposal, but on such a short notice, I dare say it might be a futile attempt to try and get it. As for myself, I have to say that only recently I made an investment and most of my ready money is thus tied up until the end of the year."

"Do try. If every else fails, that might save her," Hopkins suggested.

It was clear that Lord Bentham disliked having to ask for the money or any money for that matter. It was obvious enough that he was already ashamed enough that he had to admit to us, that he did not have such a 'trifling' amount lying around – well, for his circles anyway.

"You have the money already, if I may say so," Sherlock Holmes pointed out. "It right here before you, neatly packed in a suitcase already."

All of us stared at him. But, of course, he was right. What they wanted was their money, presumably in the hopes that it had not been recognised as being false. Hopkins nodded his agreement.

"But is my daughter safe where she is?" Lord Bentham inquired.

"At the moment she is their insurance that they will get back what is theirs, or even better, to get actual coin instead, so I dare say yes. Be as it might, we have no clue as yet, where she might be held and by whom, so this is our only chance at present unless we'll find a better one within the next couple of hours,"

"But..." Debenham threw in but was silenced by the father of his lady-love.

"Mr Holmes is right. Unfortunately."

"But..."

"Do you think this is easy for me?" Bentham thundered. "She is my only child, my little daughter. Had it not been for your stupidity, your insistence to woo her when you knew I was opposed to it, nothing of this would have come to pass. You should have walked away months ago."

Debenham tried to speak again and again but to no avail. Lord Bentham would not listen to him, and perhaps that was for the better. There was nothing that could be done and anything rash might lead to more trouble than Lady Penelope was already in. As stupid as her actions had been, I felt sorry for her and her predicament.

With that, we, along with Inspector Hopkins, left the two men to their own devices, though even as the three of us descended the stairs of the dimly lit boarding house, we could hear their increasingly raised voices.

"I hope Debenham doesn't get throttled," the young inspector remarked dryly as we stepped out of the door.

"Were it my daughter, I probably would do so," Sherlock remarked. "Or at least kick him in the shins. What a stupid thing to do, even had it not come to this conundrum."

"It certainly was stupid. But people in love don't always act wisely. If this were a play, I would think it outrageously overdone. Such a comedy of errors!" was all I could contribute, for though the situation was a dire one, I could not help noticing the absurdity of it all, from beginning to end, from the unsuitable love of the young people, the adamant refusal of his consent from the father, his sending the daughter back to school as if she were a naughty child, up till the staged abduction and the consequent mix-up – and now the counterfeit money. Could there be any case more impossibly ridiculous as this one?

Hopkins chuckled, while my husband only nodded absent-mindedly, but I knew him too well by now to be offended, and besides, my remark had not been meant to make anyone laugh. Sherlock Holmes was already busy thinking things over and considering, that, presumably, was very necessary. I did not even dare to think, where the lady was at present, nor how she was being treated. The whole case was too confusing and while it was absurd, it also seemed pressing. Only to think that a few hours before we had been certain to have solved the mystery – and with the information from Mr Debenham we certainly had done so, this new development was nothing but a puzzle and one so outrageously coincidental, that I could not find any clue in the meagre information we did have. It also did not help, that I was getting tired. My brain refused to function properly. It had been a long day, and it had gotten considerably longer than I, or Sherlock for that matter, had anticipated and it as more of a miracle that I only now began to feel fatigued. These days I hardly ever managed to get through the day without taking a short nap at some point. I also was hungry, and my feet started to swell – all in all, a perfect recipe for getting cranky and I could literally feel my mood shift just as a hansom rolled down the street and Sherlock stepped forward to halt it.

Getting into the cab, we drove home in silence, and at least one of my creature comforts was being served, as I quickly fell asleep, leaning against my husband's shoulder. But instead of being much rested, when we arrived at Baker Street, only to find Miss Jenkins already waiting for us, my feet felt like lead and I struggled to keep my eyes open. With all the new developments f the afternoon, we had all but forgotten about our appointment, but there the young teacher sat opposite Aldwin Holmes, who tried his best to comfort her. And indeed this seemed necessary, for the young lady was literally shaking with anxiety, her face half hope half fear at what we had to say, and I was truly not looking forward to explaining the situation as it was now. If Miss Jenkins was distracted now, how would she feel once everything had been said?

As Sherlock, hardly seemed to even notice her, it was on me to break the news. By the time I had finished our tale and comforted the lady accordingly, I was truly out of spirits, tired and ravenous. Sherlock was still deep in thought by the time Miss Jenkins left at last, and as often was the case when he was working, he did not bother eating anything, while Aldwin, who had eaten earlier that evening, was preparing to go to bed, for by now it was almost ten. Consequently, I ate my meal alone and then got ready for bed. Bidding Sherlock good-night I found that he was so deep in thought that he did not hear me at all. Why, since I knew it to be a normal thing and had nothing to do with me at all, I was irritated about that, I don't quite know, but I was and slipping into bed, I stupidly enough began crying of exhaustion and vexation – vexation at the situation and at myself. Well, mainly the latter.

xxx

When I got up early the next morning, slipping into my dressing gown, I felt better, though I could see that my husband's side of the bed had not been slept in. I had expected as much. What I had not expected was, that he had already gone out, though I probably should have. Once more I sat down for a meal without my husband being present, carefully avoiding the pot of coffee which Mrs Hudson had provided out of habit, and instead sipping on my tea. Though by now the sickness had all but passed, there still were some items of food that I could not stand, and coffee was at the very top of that list. I had to smile thinking that only for that reason, Sherlock refrained from drinking coffee in the morning, only to be saddened again that he was not there right now. For some reason, I craved his company, though I had enjoyed it all of the previous day. But that had been mainly Sherlock Holmes the detective, not Sherlock Holmes my beloved husband. Oh dear, what did I actually want? With a self-deprecating grin, I thought of how Anne Fraser had been constantly torn between laughter and crying while expecting her daughter. It had been a challenge to be around her then. So, high time to pull myself together and do something actively myself! My mind strayed towards the case and in order to make any sense of it, I decided to once again resort to my usual method of writing things down on a piece of paper. But before I had the time to do so, my father in law came in, ready dressed and with a smile on his face.

"Ah, good morning Hattie, how are you this morning?" he greeted cheerfully, and with that lifted my mood a bit further.

"Good morning, father. Well, I cannot really say, my mood seems to be unable to decide this fine morning whether it wants to be in the dumps or actually happy."

He chuckled in reply, then said: "I would say chose the latter, why would anyone want to be miserable?"

Shrugging my shoulder I pulled a face and poured him a cup of tea. Aldwin always drank tea, lots of it. Good!

The meal was a comfortable one, and by the time my husband's father left for the museum, I was tolerably cheerful and determined to follow through with my plan of making notes and see what I could make of the information assembled there. Quickly I got over to our bedroom to get dressed, only to find to my dismay, that none of the dresses I had at hand, fit me any longer – well, aside from the one I had been wearing the day before, but which was too dusty and wrinkled to put on again. With a sigh I fetched my work basket to see what could be done, but as I had already let out the seams of my skirts as far as I could, and that had not been very much for at the time of making them, I had not taken into consideration that perhaps one day I might need to widen them, all I could do at present was attach a ribbon to the waist band of one of the skirts and wear a shirtwaist over it for concealment and thus now, and quite involuntarily making my condition official. It was just as well, the corset was getting increasingly uncomfortable to wear, even though I had already exchanged the silk laces with elastics and loosened it by several inches and as yet I had not gotten a maternity one.

As I stood before the mirror I could not help thinking that it was quite odd that I should have increased so much already. After all, I was hardly four months gone, well, not quite even, by my estimation. Unless... - There were but two possibilities, either I had miscalculated and I was actually further along than I had thought, which could easily happen if a woman had slight bleeding at the beginning of the pregnancy and that was not uncommon at all, or I was expecting more than one child.

At that, I had to sit down, hand on my swollen stomach, till at last, I started laughing. With the image Aldwin had painted of his son as a boy it was not difficult to imagine what two little rascals of the kind could do to drive their parents crazy. Oh dear! But there was always the chance that they would be girls, or that one baby would be born any time between July and September. It was not, as if calculating a pregnancy was in any way an exact science anyway, and no matter how thoroughly one thought things out, babies had a mind of their own when it came to the time they wanted to be born.

Feeling slightly odd with my 'new' attire, I finally sat down and got to work, starting with reading the second, or rather the actual ransom note at last:

Mylord Bentham,

I had the pleasure of findin your daughter well, though in an unexpected place. But since she's now in me hands, and considerin that she's one fine lady, I dare say you would be willin to pay to get her back, don't you? Considerin her value, I would say that £ 25.000 is not too much to ask for such fine a lady.

Bring the money to the back of 13 Cavendish Square and put it underneath the back stairs by noon on the morrow and you will get your daughter back unharmed. Should you neglegt to pay on time, harm will be done, and should you neglegt to pay at all, you will never see her again.

X

I chanced at the clock and saw that it was only a quarter to nine. Good, there was time enough still. So, what was it I knew?

1. The first abduction had been planned carefully but staged by the lady herself. Irrelevant!

2. The second abduction had been by accident when the two suitcases looking fairly similar had been switched by the porters at the St. Pancras Station.- Or had it? Could it be that the suitcases had been exchanged on purpose because someone knew of Lady Penelope's plan?

3. The other suitcase, which at one point had been pawned, held counterfeit money in the exact amount asked for in the second ransom note. Did that mean that all the criminals wanted was to get their money back and nothing more?

4. The writer of that ransom note was not an educated person, and the note did not sound as if there had been any previous planning of abducting Lady Penelope.

5. There was the possibility of a criminal organization behind it that forged money and brought it into circulation. Where, when and who?

6. Sherlock assumed that they had connections to one of the money prints.

That was not exactly a lot to go on, was it? And when I read my notes over again, what made me decidedly queasy was the fact that no particulars had been given to where and when the lady was to be returned to her family. It did not bode well, and yet, all of this seemed very spontaneous, so perhaps there was no reason to wonder about such a vital detail missing. At the time of writing the writer might not have thought out his plan to the end yet. So, not many facts at hand, but was there perhaps conclusions that could be drawn from the meagre information that I had available to me? Now that I wasn't tired any longer, and well fed on top of that, it was much easier to think than it had been the night before.

The possibility that the two cases had been switched on purpose I discarded fairly quickly. It did not seem logical to me. Had they intended to abduct the lady, it would have made more sense had they just taken her instead of leaving the police with a portmanteau full of false money, and besides, how could they have known she was in the suitcase in the first place? Consequently, they must have been at the station to get somewhere to bring the money to. But where? Or to whom? As far as I knew people who produced counterfeit money were keen on exchanging it for real one, either by spending it in small sums or to swap it for one big sum. Considering the vast amount of money, I thought the latter to be more likely in this case. But where would one do such a thing? At a bank? Surely a bank was the one place counterfeiters tried to avoid. Or so at least I would assume. Hm, perhaps I should take a little trip to St. Pancras to inquire what trains had left the platform on which Debenham, Lady Penelope and Miss Jenkins had arrived shortly before. It might lead to nothing, but it was worth a try. And I certainly had the time before the appointed time given in the missive.

I put on my hat and coat, donned my gloves and leaving a note should Sherlock return, left for the station. It was one of the first warm and sunny days of the year. The sun was shining brightly, the wind cleared the streets of the smoke from the many fireplaces and I was tempted to walk a little instead of taking a cab right from our doorstep. But considering that I had not that much time I opted to take a cab straight away.

To find out what trains had left that platform and to where was indeed an easy feat and suddenly I felt a bit silly for not just having it looked up at Bradshaw's. I thought it unlikely that someone would have gone hours before their departure, and so I only asked for those trains that had left within a quarter of an hour from the station. One had gone to Sheffield via Northampton and Leicester, another had gone to Leeds stopping at Cambridge, Peterborough, Nottingham and Sheffield and yet another had left for Norwich, with a stop in Bury St Edmunds. Then it suddenly occurred to me, that there was the possibility that they, too, had just arrived instead of leaving, but the only train coming in at that time had been the one on which Lady Penelope had arrived, and since St Pancras was a terminating station that was that. The man who held her now hostage must have been on his way to somewhere. I tried to recall from where the letter had been sent, but could not. Glancing at the large clock in the hall of the station I found that I had enough time to go back to Baker Street – and thinking about it, perhaps it would be better to take Tom along to Cavendish Square anyway.

I retrieved the letter only to find that it had not been sent by post at all, but by a courier, whoever he might have been. In all likeliness one of the many street urchins rambling around London. Where it had stemmed from was not to make out, but it was likely that the person who had sent it, had not gone too far from London. With the feeling, I was missing something I went downstairs where I found our page sitting over some mathematical problems Aldwin had given him.

"Tom, would you like to accompany me?" I asked and was met with an eager expression.

Almost immediately Tom jumped from his chair and before I knew it, we were back outside and on our way to Cavendish Square.

"Where are we going?" my little page inquired even before we had climbed into the cab.

"Cavendish Square to meet with Mr Holmes," I replied, certain that I would find Sherlock there.

However, when we arrived, no-one was there. Not the inspector, not Lord Bentham, not Mr Debenham, nor my own dear husband. No suspect as far as I could discern was lingering around in the streets, which in this part of town were actually very quiet. It was a noble area with well-kept houses and gardens, a small green in the middle of the square and so much respectability that I, in my rather plain clothes that did not even fit very well, considering my increasing midsection, felt quite out of place. Once in a while, a carriage drove by dropping of fashionable ladies, and dashing looking gentlemen, but that was all. - And none stopped at No 13 – the only house around which was unoccupied.

When it was well past the hour, I made my way around but still, nothing indicated anybody had been here recently. The house was much like its neighbours, large, a bit oppressing in its architecture and with its closed shutters. The garden was not overgrown, but not as neat as the others either. I found the back stairs and saw that underneath them was a small space. - The very one where the money should have been deposited. It was empty. What on earth was going on? I was still standing there, eyes fixed on the stairs, though not seeing anything, when I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.