The Adventure of the Queen Anne's Revenge

By D.J. Culling

Only weeks after solving the mystery of the Deverill Diamonds, Esther Morstan-Eyre and her best friend Sam Wiggins set out to crack a new case - the murder of Sam’s beloved father. Along the way they encounter a rogue’s gallery of shady characters as they traverse the Victorian streets, from the depths of the London underworld to the heights of a society ball. Expect twists and turns as Esther and Sam take on their most challenging foe, a one-eyed serial killer hell-bent on vengeance...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244463519

Book preview

The Adventure of the Queen Anne's Revenge

- CHAPTER ONE -

The Aftermath

I ran as fast as I could, my heart pounding inside my chest and my legs burning with the effort of keeping ahead of the policeman who was chasing me.

Utter dolt that I am, I had recognised him too late. That is to say, I was distracted and didn’t notice him until it was too late.

It was Police Constable McGarrigle, unmistakable with his bushy black beard, his rounded gut, his fob watch and his slack-jawed expression. He had almost dropped his watch in the shock of spotting me and had let out a tiny yelp of surprise before he had recovered and started to run straight at me. It was his tiny yelp that had given him away and I ploughed away from him at breakneck speed, my mind racing about what would happen if I was caught… if I was taken ‘home’… I raced away with all my might, as if my Aunt Cordelia herself was pursuing me, wielding her wretched cane above her head.

I had been down to the Britannia Theatre again, hidden myself among the carts and crates in the alley that led to the stage door and waited, like the freak that I was, for a glimpse of her.

By her, I mean Hettie Deverill of course. I had become interested in Miss Deverill during the Deverill Diamonds investigation. She was a lot older than I was, but it made no difference to me. Suffice to say, to me, Hettie Deverill was perfect. And, when I was not working or sleeping, I would creep to the theatre like a thief in the night and peep at her like an oddball.

Why? The truth is that I did not know wholly. Sam occasionally told me that I was ‘obsessed with ‘Ettie Deverill’, but he never said more than that. And, as ever, for his lack of interference or interest in my motivations and general oddness, I was, and remain, grateful to Sam.

I sped through the backstreets as fast as I could, the sound of the galumphing McGarrigle behind me. He was running much faster than I would have given him credit for, shouting for me to stop as he chased me.

I took a turn into an alley, nearly running headlong into a drunkard carrying a bottle of spirits who was staggering out of a dingy-looking pub. I swerved narrowly to avoid him and sped as fast as I could down the alleyway. Only two seconds passed before I heard the sound of a bottle smashing on the floor and the drunkard yelling out a flustered Oi!

McGarrigle was hot on my heels! How was he keeping up with me? Surely he would run out of puff soon!

I raced down the alleyway for all I was worth passing broken windows, shop windows displaying their Christmas wares and homeless people leaning against walls, all a blur to me as I ran at speed past them. At the end of the alley I spied a door to my right which was open. I had a split second to decide whether to enter it and try to hide or to carry on running. The decision made, I burst through the door, the bolt on the door rattling loudly as I did so, and found myself swamped in darkness as I shut the door fast behind me.

I heard McGarrigle’s footsteps come chugging past. He was gone! I had only to wait a few minutes to be sure, and then I could leave this place far behind me. I tried squinting to fathom out my surroundings through the pitch blackness I found myself in.

The room, to my sudden horror and astonishment, seemed to be full of people, all standing stock still in the darkness. I could make out the shapes of their torsos clearly, surrounding me. I was immediately terrified. Who were they? What were they doing there? Would they pounce on me at any moment? I backed up towards the door I had just entered ready to flee for my life, opening it a crack.

As I did, some of the limited sunlight from the alley streamed into the room and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. They were not people hell-bent on my demise. They were clothes shop mannequins, adorned with all the latest fashions. I was in the back room of a tailor’s shop! What a twerdle I was for letting my imagination run away with me! These silent, wooden figures looked on at me with complete indifference as I wiped the sweat from my brow.

Recovering myself, I was about to open the door slightly more to try and peep outside when I heard a sound that set my heart racing once more. The distant running footsteps of McGarrigle had stopped. They had been replaced with the sound of his heavy feet making their way back towards the door. He was going to come in here. He would find me! No question!

I had only seconds to think.

I ran to the side of the room behind the door (so I would be shielded from most of the light), disrobed one of the dummies, wrapped its fur-trimmed coat around me so that it covered some of my face, plonked its elaborate hat upon my head and stood as still as I possibly could. I must have looked a ridiculous sight and I thanked Heaven that Sam was not with me to witness my fall from grace. What he would have thought of this ludicrous moment goodness only knows…

The door swung open with a creak and McGarrigle’s heavy boot peeped tentatively through the open doorway.

Miss Morstan-Eyre? he asked with a measure of trepidation.

I remained completely silent and tried to stop breathing.

Again he called out my name as he stepped further into the room, adding I know you’re in ‘ere! By now, I assumed, he had fathomed out that he was surrounded by tailor’s dummies. I imagined him looking everywhere within the room and I sucked in my breath, trying to keep my hands as immobile as I could. I prayed that he would look away from me, and would move to examine the mannequins on his left, rather than to his right (where I was standing statuesque and breathless).

To my great relief he did. He stepped to his left towards the first dummy in the semicircle surrounding him. I peeped out gingerly from under the ornate hat atop my head to see him reaching out and prodding the dummy. He reached up and took off the dummy’s hat. He was going to work his way around the semicircle, finding me last of all.

I watched this performance with mounting terror. Dummy by dummy, hat by hat, coat by coat, he made his way around the room. I could hear his weighty footsteps and his quick breaths as he did so. All the while, I was waiting for my moment to flee.

He reached the middle of the semicircle and I knew the time had come. Without pause I ran for the door as fast as I could. Out of the corner of my eye I saw McGarrigle spin on the spot and begin to charge towards me!

I reached the door before him, slamming it shut behind me as I made it outside and, with trembling fingers, shot the bolt home.

The moment the bolt had been shot, McGarrigle was thumping with all of his might on the other side of the door, shouting Oi! Let me out! He was pounding so hard I was sure that, at any moment, he would break the door down with his fists.

I did not wait around to find out. I ran as fast as I could, back the way I had come, down the alley and through the winding backstreets. I ran and ran, even when it was clear I had left McGarrigle and the vicinity of the Britannia Theatre a long way behind me.

As I ran, I got the strangest of looks from everyone I passed. I wondered, in my foolish imagination, if they were undercover policemen, working with McGarrigle and about to accost and arrest me at any moment. Or were they just staring at me because I was scarlet with effort and fatigue? Why else would they be staring at me so intensely? It was not until I was several streets away from home that I realised I was still wearing the ridiculous fur coat and the even more ridiculous hat.

I took them off and wrapped the hat up inside the coat, wrapping the coat around the hat several times. I felt guilty for having accidentally stolen something, but there was no way I was taking it back, and it would have been foolish to dump the tell-tale items anywhere near where I now lived, in case the police found them and started going door-to-door.

I rounded a very familiar corner, the coat still wrapped up in my arms. I was out of breath and my chest ached, while my legs were uncertain and wobbly beneath me. Each pant of my lungs sent steam from my mouth as the heat of my breath hit the cold December air. If I did not know any better I would have assumed that I had swallowed a cigarette and was currently huffing its vapours into the frosty air around me.

I had only had to run from the police a few times since my ‘disappearance’ and all those times had been when I had gone to the theatre. What a twit I was! What an unholy, unhinged twit! That was the closest I had been to capture; to never seeing freedom again. ‘I must not go again’ I told myself as I stood there, puffing. ‘That was the last time! Never again!’ I truly meant it. Hettie Deverill was someone I would never look on again.

I breathed deeply, stood myself up straight, adjusted a few flyaway hairs in the shop window with a spare hand and walked unsteadily up to the door.

I pushed it open and the light tinkle of the familiar shop bell greeted me. I closed the door behind me and an overwhelming sensation of being safe overtook me. I was back where I belonged, amidst the musty smell of books, looking down shelves upon shelves of tomes old and new, no policeman to run from, nothing to fear.

Who is it? the beautifully crackly voice called out.

It’s me Miss Bilbie! It’s Esther! I answered, lilting my voice in as sing-song a fashion as I could considering I was still woefully out of puff.

Miss Angelica Bilbie shuffled out from behind one of the shelves and twinkled benevolently in my direction. She was nearly seventy by my latest reckoning, with a dainty pair of half-moon pince-nez perched as far down her hooked nose as they could feasibly be without falling off, her white hair in a messy bun, her fragile frame clothed in one of her usual, tiny, floral dresses. Imagine, if you will, that a passing wizard had one day spied a female mole who looked particularly lonely and had decided, in his kindness, to turn that lonely mole into a human woman so she could open a bookshop and no longer be lonely. Well, Miss Bilbie is exactly the result he would have arrived at. She was a mole in human form and one of the most intelligent people I had ever met in my short life.

There were three characteristics of Miss Bilbie that made her the ideal companion for me:

1) She had no interest in current affairs. She read no newspapers. She paid no attention to anything that happened outside of her shop and her books. This had been particularly helpful when my name (and a drawing of my face) had been plastered across the front of a variety of newspapers. ABDUCTED: CHIEF CONSTABLE’S ONLY CHILD. Chief Constable Ulysses Morstan Eyre’s adored daughter Esther, who is but 12 years of age, was abducted by person or persons unknown on the 17th of November 1888. It is thought she may have been taken hostage by the notorious Red Razor Gang (who had made threats against her and her family), although no ransom demands have been made. Inspector Wakefield is leading the force in searching high and low for Miss Esther so she can come to live in her happy home again…. Thus the various newspaper articles had run. The fact that the Chief Constable was not my real father, that he only wanted me back so he could send me off to some ghastly school in Yorkshire, that my home had not been remotely ‘happy’ and that I was about as ‘adored’ by my ‘father’ as I would be if I were some sort of unpleasant foot fungus had evidently eluded the intrepid journalists of Fleet Street.

2) Miss Bilbie was as blind as a bat. I had even gone so far, in a moment of arrogant madness, as to show her one of the newspapers with my picture in it. I think I was trying to blend in by not blending in; to make out that, by showing her the picture, I could not possibly be the person in the picture. Idiocy, you will discover, is not something I am above. Happily, not only did she not recognise me as the person in the drawing, she had not even looked at the part of the newspaper I was holding up to her. Instead she had squinted at a half-page advertisement for Royle’s Patent Self-Pouring Teapots: No more aching arms, as the teapot has not to be lifted! and she had nodded, grunting lightly.

3) She loved books. When Sam’s mother had found me the job with Miss Bilbie, I knew that I had become the luckiest girl in the world. To work in a bookshop was one thing, but to work with a lady who knew so much about books was a revelation. We spent our days discussing Dickens (with whom I am obsessed as you will discover, if you have not already) and she introduced me to a wide variety of books I had never read: The Tales of the Arabian Nights; Don Quixote; Homer; Ovid; Moby Dick; Jane Eyre and, of course, Shakespeare. Shakespeare! Miss Bilbie had not believed me when I had told her that I had never read any Shakespeare at first. I did not go into the details of my childhood with her. She had simply handed me the Complete Works and I went on from there, enjoying each and every page (other than Timon of Athens who, frankly, I thought was a bit of a ninny.)

I thought you’d gone to see your friend, dearest, Miss Bilbie said, looking in my general direction, but not straight at me.

I had, but I…er….forgot something, I stuttered. (I had told her I was going to see Sam, compulsive liar that I was.)

Oh. Well you had better go upstairs and fetch it, Esther dear: If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Miss Bilbie and I always play a game of ‘guess who I am quoting’ whenever we meet. The fact that she’s read at least ten thousand books more than I have does not put me off. One day she will give me a quotation and I will say the right name.

Charlotte Bronte? I hazarded.

Edgar Allan Poe. Mad as a wet hen and American of course, but let’s not hold that against him, she smiled, her eyes sparkling through her pince-nez.

I won’t, I said, smiling back at Miss Bilbie. I’ll just pop to my room and fetch it.

She ushered me with one hand towards the back of the shop. I went in that direction, hiding the coat and hat behind me, and ascended a rickety flight of stairs until I was sat comfortably in my room above the shop, the hat and coat tossed onto the floor. My room was bedecked with books, including a copy of The Pickwick Papers by my bedside (which I was re-reading) alongside a copy of Gulliver’s Travels (which I had just begun). Sam had jovially complained, as I seemed to be using even more long words now that I was better-read.

You will, by now, be rather fed up with this tangent and will be clamouring to know what has happened with mine and Sam’s investigation into the murder of his father by the one-eyed man on the bridge.

If you have not read the Adventure of the Deverill Diamonds I will get you up to speed as quickly as I can. If you have read it, then feel free to skip the following paragraph.

Sam Wiggins is my best and only friend. He is slightly older than I am, but not by much. During our last investigation Sam, (well Sam’s mother Mrs Wiggins (who is lovely)) revealed that Sam’s father - Billy Wiggins - had been stabbed to death by a one-eyed assassin on a bridge and thrown into the Thames. Sam felt personally responsible for the death for his own reasons. At the end of the last case I had agreed to help Sam to find his father’s murderer and bring the culprit to justice. To Sam, this was a personal vendetta. A score to be settled. I had promised to solve it with him, because he is a friend and, well, because that’s the sort of thing one should do for a friend.

That was a month ago. You would think we had made a wealth of progress since then.

You would be mistaken.

It had taken the first week simply to find me somewhere to live and somewhere to work that we both deemed ‘safe’. I had wanted to live at Sam’s house, but as the house was being watched by police officers in case I turned up we had to rule it out. Before Miss Bilbie, Sam had found me shelter with his mother’s cousin - Miss Matty Longridge - who had taken me in and asked no questions. It was a wonderful house to live in, constantly busy with children and activity. It made me realise what I had missed out on, growing up, as I had, almost entirely alone.

Unfortunately, the police frequented the street Miss Longridge’s family occupied regularly as it was in a ‘run-down’ part of town and the chances of them spying me were high so we were forced to look elsewhere. Miss Longridge happened to char for Miss Bilbie’s bookshop and so it was here that I came under the name Esther Summer.

Once I was safely ensconced in a ‘reputable’ corner of town with Miss Bilbie the hunt began in earnest for the killer.

Sadly, we had only two leads:

The first was the people whom Sam believed to be his father’s only friends - two petty criminals by the names of Claude Lempo and Jeremiah Lugg. Sadly, Sam had only met them once a very long time ago and did not know their addresses and, with nothing else to go on but two names, we soon came up against a brick wall. Mrs Wiggins did remember that Claude Lempo had something to do with animals. Beyond that, she knew nothing about either of them. No-one else of nodding acquaintance with Billy seemed to know anything, (or at least, were willing to tell two twelve-year olds anything). This was a good couple of weeks of drawing complete blanks. A very dispiriting beginning to our investigation. By my reckoning nearly three months had passed since the death of Billy Wiggins and we had progressed nowhere.

We had the same amount of luck with our second lead - the witness to the murder that the newspaper had cited. That witness had seen the murder and had described the assassin as having skin and scars where one of his eyes should have been. Sadly, this witness had not been named in the newspaper so, again, we had nothing to go on.

Under normal circumstances we would have gone to see Inspector Wakefield and asked him the witness’ name, of course. These were not normal circumstances, however. The last time I had seen Inspector Wakefield was when he had me under lock and key, a short time after I had pointed a loaded gun at him while aiding and abetting a known drug smuggler and gang leader to escape his clutches (a long story but, I think, a good one). Since then I had become a wanted person, my face plastered in newspapers and my name bandied around London. So hopefully you can see that going to the police cap-in-hand would have made no sense whatsoever. Sam possibly thought of me as a brave heroine, but my family thought of me as an ungrateful runaway and the police thought of me as a wanted criminal. Such is the inconsistency of things.

Sam, ingenious chap that he is, had suggested that we put a notice in the newspapers to try and find the witness. This we had duly done, paying money from our hard-earned wages to place the notice. That was three weeks ago. No-one had responded. Nothing had come of it.

When the notice yielded nothing Sam had become very low. Sam was not one to show emotion but I, who knew him well, could tell that he was despondent and all his thoughts of finding his father’s killer and bringing them to book had evaporated into thin air. Seeing him like this made me feel wretched, so I suggested that we place the notice in the newspapers every day from then on. This we had done and it continued to yield a grand total of absolutely nothing other than the dimmest flicker of hope in Sam’s eyes. I felt certain that I was letting him down and not being the ace detective that he had hoped I would be.

So much for our lacklustre investigation.

I slumped down onto my rickety bed, casting all thoughts of Hettie from my mind and thinking what on earth I could do to keep my promise to Sam. How was I going to help him solve the crime? I had failed him so far. He had come to me full of hope and expectation telling me that I was ‘the smartest person’ he knew. He was certain that, with my help, he would see justice done. I had achieved nothing. Found nothing. And, worse, when I could have been looking for clues or thinking of ways through I had instead, like the selfish pig I am, swanned off to the alley behind the theatre to moon over a woman I barely knew and who, I had no doubt, cared not whether I lived or died.

What a foul beast I was. What a rotten detective.

Worse, what a rotten friend.

Morose and angry with myself, I did what I always do when that mood overtakes me - I reached for Dickens. I grabbed my copy of The Pickwick Papers and turned to the trial scene, where the antics of the character Sam Weller never fail to make me smile. Soon, I would have to head back out, carrying the ‘thing I had forgotten’ so Miss Bilbie did not get suspicious. She probably could not care less, but still.

No sooner had I opened the book and found the chapter I wanted than I heard the tinkle of the shop bell, the door slamming, voices below and quick footsteps.

I fought the impulse to leap up in terror as if the police had tracked me home. I knew logically that they could not have done so. The footsteps were trotting up the stairs now at a rate of knots and I recognised the light, quick tread of Sam.

The door swung open with great speed and he burst into the room at pace.

His blonde hair was even more messy and sweaty than usual and his light blue eyes glistened with an energy I had not seen in them for months. His crumpled waistcoat and flat cap were in disarray and he honestly looked like he had run all the way to Miss Bilbie’s from the Outer Hebrides.

We’ve got ‘im!

"Got…? Got who?"

The witness! The notice went in again yesterday, right? ‘E’s seen it and ‘e found me just now, sweepin’ the crossin’. We’re meetin’ tonight to talk! Tonight at midnight, in St. James’ Park!

He wants to meet two twelve year olds in the middle of a park at midnight? Why on earth does he…?

‘E said ‘e wanted peace and quiet. ‘E knows somefink. This is it, Est’! (He has taken to calling me Est’ instead of Esther, which I secretly love.) This is what we’ve been waitin’ for. We can find out who killed… me Dad…

Who is he? I said, noticing the subtle change in Sam as he spoke of his father. Sam is very hard to read unless you know him very well, which I was only just beginning to feel I did.

Not a clue… Ginger hair, thin. So? You comin’ wiv me?

Wouldn’t miss it! I replied without a second of hesitation, throwing as much enthusiasm into my voice as I could in an effort to lift Sam’s spirits once more.

It worked. Sam half-smiled, a look of dogged determination in his bright eyes as the thought of avenging his father’s death rippled through him. I felt