Read Online The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nancy Springer
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him) trotted down again with quite a startled look on his face to tell me, “Miss Nightingale says she will see you. Follow me, please.”
My every inference concerning the remarkable Florence Nightingale proved wrong, as became apparent to me within a few minutes. At the very top of the house, in a spacious chamber awash with light from undraped windows, she awaited me: a plump, sweet, smiling old-fashioned beauty sitting up in a large bed richly and tidily arrayed with ribbon-edged pillows and silky eiderdown “puff.” Her hair, parted in the centre and smoothed back in the simple manner of her youth, had not yet turned grey! Her lovely, symmetrical face showed scarcely a line! In every way she seemed as radiant as her sunny bedchamber, from which one heard nothing of the many people two storeys below, only birdsong from a back garden one could view through her open windows as if enjoying serene Eden in the midst of London City.
Just as serenely Miss Nightingale greeted me. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” She indicated an armchair pulled up to the far side of the bed, pleasantly situated near the windows. With unconcealed interest she studied me as I rounded her foot-board and sat down.
“I was expecting someone a great deal older,” she remarked, “given this.” She held up the paper upon which I had written, in floral Morse code, S.O.S. “How do you know about my roses and daisies? But first, please, what is your name?”
Amazing, the way she exuded courtesy yet spared no honesty and wasted no time. Her manner allowed me to answer her truly. “Any name I could tell you, Miss Nightingale, I would have to invent, and at the moment I have small energy for dissembling.”
She nodded as if this were an ordinary enough answer. Far back from her forehead, as if to show off the impeccable sheen and symmetry of her hair, she wore an odd sort of white kerchief that tied beneath her chin and lavished a cascade of lace from the crown of her head to the collar of her velvet bed-jacket. This singular headgear nodded along with her.
“I can see you are much distraught,” she said softly—I was to learn that she was famous for never raising her voice, not once throughout her life or her years in the Crimea. “It would seem that your trouble somehow concerns me?”
“It might,” I said, and without further ado, as concisely as possible I detailed the circumstances of Mrs. Tupper’s abduction, starting with CARRIER PIGEON, DELIVER YOUR BIRD-BRAINED MESSAGE AT ONCE OR YOU WILL BE SORRY YOU EVER LEFT SCUTARI —the thornily handwritten message itself had disappeared along with my unfortunate landlady, but I knew the words by heart. Much as I knew the words that, according to Florrie, the bearded intruders had shouted at Mrs. Tupper: “We know you was a spy for the Bird!”
“Indeed, ‘the Bird’ is what they called me, those who opposed me,” responded Miss Nightingale, “and they represented me as a bird-woman in their political cartoons.” She spoke absently, with her back to me, for during my account she had turned around to rummage—I ought to explain that the headboard of her bed was actually a large, undoubtedly custom-made cubby-hole desk neatly packed with papers of all sorts, and that upon a green-draped table at her bedside more stacks of papers surrounded an electric lamp—an electric lamp! This was indeed a house of surprises, but I supposed that, driven to reform as she was, she had undertaken the expense so that she could write through the night. I had noticed that her hands, which looked far older than her face, were bent into crescents from constant writing.
Finding what she wanted, she turned back to me and showed it: an elderly woman has been abducted by brigands, et cetera, my note from the day before.
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “I wrote that.”
“And I answered it quite truthfully, dear. I simply do not recall Mrs. Tupper.”
Reaching into my satchel, I brought forth
My every inference concerning the remarkable Florence Nightingale proved wrong, as became apparent to me within a few minutes. At the very top of the house, in a spacious chamber awash with light from undraped windows, she awaited me: a plump, sweet, smiling old-fashioned beauty sitting up in a large bed richly and tidily arrayed with ribbon-edged pillows and silky eiderdown “puff.” Her hair, parted in the centre and smoothed back in the simple manner of her youth, had not yet turned grey! Her lovely, symmetrical face showed scarcely a line! In every way she seemed as radiant as her sunny bedchamber, from which one heard nothing of the many people two storeys below, only birdsong from a back garden one could view through her open windows as if enjoying serene Eden in the midst of London City.
Just as serenely Miss Nightingale greeted me. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” She indicated an armchair pulled up to the far side of the bed, pleasantly situated near the windows. With unconcealed interest she studied me as I rounded her foot-board and sat down.
“I was expecting someone a great deal older,” she remarked, “given this.” She held up the paper upon which I had written, in floral Morse code, S.O.S. “How do you know about my roses and daisies? But first, please, what is your name?”
Amazing, the way she exuded courtesy yet spared no honesty and wasted no time. Her manner allowed me to answer her truly. “Any name I could tell you, Miss Nightingale, I would have to invent, and at the moment I have small energy for dissembling.”
She nodded as if this were an ordinary enough answer. Far back from her forehead, as if to show off the impeccable sheen and symmetry of her hair, she wore an odd sort of white kerchief that tied beneath her chin and lavished a cascade of lace from the crown of her head to the collar of her velvet bed-jacket. This singular headgear nodded along with her.
“I can see you are much distraught,” she said softly—I was to learn that she was famous for never raising her voice, not once throughout her life or her years in the Crimea. “It would seem that your trouble somehow concerns me?”
“It might,” I said, and without further ado, as concisely as possible I detailed the circumstances of Mrs. Tupper’s abduction, starting with CARRIER PIGEON, DELIVER YOUR BIRD-BRAINED MESSAGE AT ONCE OR YOU WILL BE SORRY YOU EVER LEFT SCUTARI —the thornily handwritten message itself had disappeared along with my unfortunate landlady, but I knew the words by heart. Much as I knew the words that, according to Florrie, the bearded intruders had shouted at Mrs. Tupper: “We know you was a spy for the Bird!”
“Indeed, ‘the Bird’ is what they called me, those who opposed me,” responded Miss Nightingale, “and they represented me as a bird-woman in their political cartoons.” She spoke absently, with her back to me, for during my account she had turned around to rummage—I ought to explain that the headboard of her bed was actually a large, undoubtedly custom-made cubby-hole desk neatly packed with papers of all sorts, and that upon a green-draped table at her bedside more stacks of papers surrounded an electric lamp—an electric lamp! This was indeed a house of surprises, but I supposed that, driven to reform as she was, she had undertaken the expense so that she could write through the night. I had noticed that her hands, which looked far older than her face, were bent into crescents from constant writing.
Finding what she wanted, she turned back to me and showed it: an elderly woman has been abducted by brigands, et cetera, my note from the day before.
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “I wrote that.”
“And I answered it quite truthfully, dear. I simply do not recall Mrs. Tupper.”
Reaching into my satchel, I brought forth
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