Free Private Investigation by Fleur T. Reid Page A

‘good morning’, head held high.
    Lilly rolled her eyes, then allowed them to drop to the sad, soggy scrap of newspaper the landlady’s cursory housekeeping efforts had left behind. Then she narrowed her eyes as an advertisement caught her eye. She squinted to make out the words, the ink of the newsprint having bled and smudged into the surrounding white space, which in any case was now stained with tea and half-dissolved marmalade. Perhaps she needed eyeglasses. Perhaps she’d even invest in a pair of those new-fangled inspectacles all the fashionable girls at Chancery Lane had been swooning over lately. Not that she had much in common with them—in her opinion they would benefit from devoting more time to their studies and less to chattering, gossiping and obsessing over the latest style in hats.
    She picked up the sticky, soggy remnant, holding it carefully so that the wet newspaper didn’t come apart in her hands.
    ‘Wanted, a young lady, of good habits and clean in her person, with a facility for filing, typewriting and shorthand, to bring order to a gentleman’s papers and effects. Remuneration will be to the sum of six pounds a week, for as long as the task requires of her. Enquiries should be made of Mr John Dermott at 43a Jermayne Street’.
    Six pounds a week! Six pounds a week would enable her to find new lodgings, and to have whatever she liked for breakfast. Perhaps even to expend a little money on new gloves and handkerchiefs and underthings—little extravagances she had had to forego while undertaking her training at Chancery Lane. Her needlework frankly wasn’t up to much, and some of her clothes were beginning to look distinctly careworn and shabby. She wasn’t obsessed with fashion like some of the featherbrains in her typing classes, but really, there were limits.
    She determined to go to Jermayne Street at once and speak to this Mr Dermott. A few moments in front of the mirror tucking in an errant strand of her rather frizzy, dark hair and perching her hat fetchingly in place on the back of her head—holding it in place with vicious jabs of a number of wicked-looking hatpins—and she was on her way.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    Jermayne Street proved to be a reasonably well-to-do area, the sort of place where men rented living quarters or professional consulting rooms from genteel widows.
    Lilly dodged a velocipede-made-for-two, its pistons working, the gentleman at the front cranking the valves, his lady friend bouncing uncomfortably in the saddle behind him as the machine juddered over the cobbles, belching steam. The lady was wearing what looked like gentlemen’s trousers and her hair was tucked under a tight leather cap that Lilly supposed was meant to protect it from soot and from getting too windblown. She looked less than thrilled by the experience as she clung grimly on to her companion, and Lilly thought that the whole experience looked utterly ghastly.
    A discreet brass plaque by the smart, black-painted front door of number forty-three read, ‘Mr Lucien Doyle, Consulting Detective’. Lilly raised her eyebrows. Even Mrs Langley couldn’t disapprove of such an association. Of course, she imagined consulting detectives sometimes got involved in rather dangerous situations and had a certain amount to do with the criminal element, but Mrs Langley was a devotee of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Indeed, on one occasion Lilly’s landlady had met Dr Doyle himself at a meeting of spiritualists. She had come home pink-cheeked and in high good spirits despite the fact she had had no message from her husband that evening. Since then, on the rare occasions when she felt in the mood for conversation, she had blushingly referred to him as ‘Dear Dr Doyle’.
    Perhaps Lilly wouldn’t have to find new lodgings after all. A hint that she was working as a clerk for a consulting detective and a modest increase in rent might work a change in Mrs Langley’s waspish