Free The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy; Springer Page A

I help you, miss?” Halting to face me, he seemed pleasant and obliging enough. A bit dandified, perhaps. He wore tinted eyeglasses indoors. And instead of the usual sober garb of a clerk, he had on a peacock-blue ascot with a horseshoe pin, a silver-grey waistcoat with white buttons, and very smart cuff-links; indeed, his was the male equivalent of the fashionable but inexpensive clothing that ornamented Miss Meshle. If he were a seducer, perhaps he would show some interest in me –
    Nonsense. Any comparison to me was hardly fair to Lady Cecily, who was not giraffe-like in personage.
    I told Alexander Finch, “Sir, I find myself quite bewildered by such a palatial establishment graced by such a variety of wares, and I wonder whether you might show me . . .” Then I let my voice sink to a murmur only he could hear. “Lady Theodora Alistair sent me to speak with you.”
    My heart quickened as I watched to see how he would react.
    But he barely reacted at all, showing only the faintest flicker of surprise, from which he recovered quickly, falling in with my charade. “If you’ll just walk this way, miss, I’ll be pleased to assist you.”
    He led me back through the store, past a counter where an attractive female clerk stood behind absurdly disembodied carved wooden hands displaying gloves, past another where a spinsterish woman exhibited cast-iron hearth sets to husband and wife; past several more, until he reached one where a willowy young working girl stood. To her he said, “Disappear.”
    Although his tone was low and neutral, she fled wide-eyed without a smile or a word – in fear? But perhaps such was her usual manner with him. She was, after all, a doe-eyed young thing, and he was the master’s son.
    Himself slipping behind the now-vacant counter, Mr. Alexander Finch told me, “Here we have the very latest fashions in ladies’ footwear.”
    It would have attracted attention, you see, appearing disreputable, had I simply stood and talked with him. But we could converse over a counter-top, and to any onlooker it would seem that he was strictly attending to business, waiting upon me.
    I wasted no time. “Lady Theodora is taking matters into her own hands,” I explained, or fictionalised, “to see what the fair sex, in an unofficial way, can accomplish in searching for the missing Lady Cecily.”
    “Quite so. Something for spring, you say?” Pulling open some of the many deep drawers beneath and behind the counter, he brought forth a fawn-coloured boot with a delicate heel, a pearl-grey one that buttoned up the front instead of the side, and a tan one with laces.
    The boots were of excellent quality and quite lovely, but I only pretended to look at them as I told him, “No doubt you think it foolish, but Lady Theodora feels we must try. You see, the police have been of no help.”
    “I’d say not. All they do is watch me, and my father’s so vexed with me, he won’t let me out the door.”
    He said this just as imperturbably as he’d said anything else. So far I had gained no sense of him, none at all, whether for good or for ill.
    “Do you live at home with your parents?” I asked for lack of any better question.
    “No, I stay with the other clerks.”
    No doubt in a dormitory above the store.
    “Well, you’ve some respite from your father’s vexation, then. Why is he angry with you?”
    “Because I forget my place, as he calls it, treating people all much the same.” He gestured towards a bentwood chair placed on my side of the counter. “Would you care to have a seat, my lady?”
    “Oh, no!” I sat rather abruptly, because my knees weakened. “I am not – I don’t – such a title – ”
    “Well, the quality of your speech says you’re not what you appear to be, either.”
    While not titled by birth, certainly not one to be presented at court, I was a squire’s daughter, and as such, a member of the gentry, one who does not work for money. And my accent, if not my clothing,