The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Read Online Free PDF Page A

perfunctory manner, to be shushed by the boy or groom sleeping in the loft overhead after he had taken a peep at me through his window. Thus admitted to the nether-world of the neighbourhood, I started to sort out the inhabitants in my mind. Sometimes there were vegetable gardens tucked behind the carriage-houses where they could easily be enriched by manure and straw: solid and sensible folk, these. Some houses seemed empty, perhaps waiting for an owner to return from abroad, but quite a few were occupied by families with children, as evidenced by hoops, brightly striped balls, clapping-monkey pull-toys, et cetera, left lying about. And someone had a seamstress living in, sewing the entire family new springtime outfits, for in the midden-heap I found threads and scraps of everything from serge to taffeta—all of which I bagged by the light of my lantern.
    But at the next house, I saw as I shuffled towards its back fence, I needed no lantern. For some reason these people kept gas-jets flaring out-of-doors, like a modern sort of flambeau. How wasteful, and how odd.
    The gate to the carriage-drive was padlocked. But through the iron rails of the fence, and by the light of all those outdoor gas-jets, I could see quite a pile of bones just past the corner of the carriage-house.
    Once one begins collecting something, for whatever reason, the act becomes a sort of mania in itself. Even though, at the night’s end, I would give away my finds to the first beggar I encountered, nevertheless, when I saw those bones, I had to have them. Forgetting that I was supposed to be a bent and rickety woman of the slums, I swarmed up and over the fence within a moment; I love to climb, and seldom get the chance, as this is not a pastime much pursued by proper females. Lighthearted as well as light-footed, I jumped down inside the fence and turned towards my objective.
    But I’d not gone three steps when a roar worthy of a Bengal tiger paralysed me. A huge animal charged me, bearing down on me like a galloping horse.
    Ye gods! I had not seen the doghouse tucked behind the carriage-house, and now the proper owner of the bones—a massive mastiff—wished to tear my throat out.
    With no time to retreat over the fence, I was in a panic, fumbling for my dagger, when, quite unexpectedly, the beast halted, although it continued to roar and snarl at me in the most resounding and frightful manner.
    What ever in the world? Why was I not being mauled?
    Then I saw.
    Oh, my goodness.
    The mastiff had halted on the far side of another, inner fence. But not the usual sort of fence. Unless I was much mistaken—
    “What do you have there, Lucifer?” drawled an insolent voice, and a massive man, rather resembling his mastiff, appeared from between beech trees and walked up on the far side of the inner fence.
    The sunk fence, so called. Also known as a ha-ha.
    A deep ditch lined with stone. Such modern moats were not uncommon around country estates, hidden in the contours of the land so as to preserve the integrity of the vista whilst keeping out cattle and intruders—but here in the city? What ever for?
    “A midden-picker,” the burly man was saying with disgust, eyeing me as if I were a cockroach to be crushed. “How did you get in?”
    Making myself as small as possible—not difficult, under the circumstances—I did not answer, only staring at the sunk fence with my mouth ajar.
    “You don’t know what it is, do you, bones-for-brains?” I could hear the man’s sneer in his voice. “It’s a ha-ha. And do you know why it’s called that, dust-scholar? It’s called that because, when you fall in, we come and look at you and we laugh, ha-ha, ha-ha—”
    Something in the tone of his voice frightened me even more than the mastiff’s barking did. I began to back away.
    “—ha-ha, ha-ha—”
    I dodged into the shadows behind the carriage-house, out of his view, and applied myself earnestly to climbing over the wrought-iron fence.
    “—ha-ha, and