even possible for women to obtain a good education without extraordinary effort. Oxford and Cambridge grudgingly allowed them to attend lectures and take university examinations, but even today, at the beginning of the twentieth century, women aren’t eligible for degrees at either place, no matter how much higher their scores are than those of the men competing with them. What was she to do?
“People who know very little about her work say she has made a hobby of crime. They could not be more mistaken. She has made a profession of it, and the profession is one she invented herself. She applies research, along with analysis and synthesis, to criminal investigations—not the ordinary kind of research done in libraries nor the analysis and synthesis practised in laboratories, but an intense mental application that brings the full spectrum of human knowledge to bear on criminological problems, even including such a newfangled thing as psychological medicine. She had one enormous advantage—her social position and wealth opened doors that otherwise would have remained tightly shut, and it also enabled her to call upon the many professional men and scholars of her acquaintance for assistance. Scotland Yard can’t begin to match her resources. She is the only investigator in the world who works like this, but she will never receive credit for it because she is a woman.”
Most of her titled friends thought she had an eccentric quirk for solving mysteries—certainly an odd pastime for a person in her position but a harmless one. They condescendingly came to her for assistance with their own petty domestic and business puzzles. Few of them had any conception of the enormous scope of Lady Sara’s activity, or they would have considered it far more disreputable than acting.
Her greatest difficulty was and always had been gaining professional respect from the men she had to work with. It was a challenge she faced anew each time she encountered another pompous ass in a position of authority. Lord Anstee described a confrontation he had witnessed between Lady Sara and two of Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioners: “She encouraged them to talk until they had made resounding fools of themselves. Then she began to ask questions neither of them could answer. When she had them sufficiently embarrassed, she answered the questions herself, and from that point they had to listen to her.”
That may have been her method with politicians and bureaucrats; where artists, or scientists, or professional men were concerned, she encouraged them to talk because she wanted to know what they knew. Her memory was astonishing, and that, coupled with her wonderful intelligence, enabled her to analyze and compare things no one else noticed. She delighted in assembling a panel of experts, hearing everything they had to say on a subject, and then watching with amusement while they argued themselves into a conclusion she had already arrived at.
Lady Sara’s headquarters were in nearby Connaught Mews, where a block of stables had been remodelled to meet her requirements. The end rooms on the first floor, formerly the quarters of grooms and coachmen, were now a comfortable apartment where her sometimes highly irregular comings and goings, at all hours and in odd dress or actual disguise, would not perplex her mother’s staid servants or titled guests.
The ground floor below, which had been occupied by stables, had become her workrooms, and it contained a study as well as a laboratory where all kinds of odd experiments and investigations were conducted.
Adjoining Lady Sara’s headquarters were apartments for her employees, including my own residence. Beyond these were carriage houses, stables, and more living quarters for employees. Lady Sara owned a carriage as well as her own private cabs, both hansom and four wheeler, which meant she was always prepared for whatever kind of foray a crisis called for. In addition, there was a cart that could be adapted to various highly useful functions, from impersonating a greengrocer to costermongering.
She also owned a splendid Spider Phaeton that she favoured for her own daytime excursions because it was a socially acceptable vehicle for a woman to drive. She could take the reins herself and occasion no more severe criticism from her mother’s friends than “There goes Lady Sara being eccentric again.” Once out of their sight, her driving became decidedly unladylike. I often occupied the phaeton’s rear seat garbed as her groom.
She kept six horses and a donkey, which made it possible for her employees to use several vehicles simultaneously if an investigation, or several investigations, required it.
Lady Sara had remarked that the case of the two giants might be one for the board. The “board” she referred to was the world’s largest cribbage board. It had been designed by Burke Varnley, her father, a cribbage fanatic from the moment he learned the game as a child until his death.
The Earl had two passions in life—besides women, his Countess would have quickly added—cribbage and eating. He acquired the latter obsession in Spain at Madrid’s famous Restaurante Botin. That venerable establishment introduced the Earl to many delicacies he was fond of describing in lyrical terms, but its great specialty, and the Earl’s favorite, was cochinillo asado, roast suckling pig.
When, much later, he learned that the invention of cribbage was ascribed to Sir John Suckling, a seventeenth century poet and cavalier with the army of Charles I, the notion that the inventor of his favourite pastime had the same name as his favorite food came to him as a revelation. He considered it a divine command to merge his two passions.
He founded the Suckling Club, which offered its members an elaborate roast suckling dinner weekly and access to Sir John Suckling’s game at all hours. Unfortunately, true gourmets rarely proved to be cribbage players. They were more prone to nap after a meal than gather around a board for a challenging session of cribbage, and the club was not a success.
The Earl invented a six-handed game of cribbage especially for the Suckling Club. It required the enormous cribbage board and three packs of cards. The board had rarely been used because of the difficulty the Earl experienced in assembling six players of the quality he insisted on. Now Lady Sara kept the board in the centre of a large oval conference table in her study, and she used it to peg her progress in her more important investigations. She could keep six cases going at once on it, but she rarely had more than one or two that were sufficiently interesting to merit a place there. The board was more than six feet long and used pegs almost as large as a man’s fingers, and the six tracks, of 121 holes each, looped and entwined to form fantastic patterns. I often wondered how the Earl’s inebriated friends—which, according to his Countess, they frequently were—had accurately pegged their points on that complicated board.
Because the tracks were so convoluted, Lady Sara referred to them as byways—her Byways to Evil.
If criminal investigation was an unusual pastime for a noblewoman, so was my presence in Lady Sara’s household. As her principal assistant, I considered myself the most fortunate of mortals. In inventing a profession for herself, she also devised one for me. But first she had to invent me!
I remember very little of my early childhood. I have read that a baby is born in London every five minutes, and it is only to be expected that most of them arrive in undistinguished homes. It was not quite correct to say I was a street arab—a homeless, unwanted child—from birth. Someone wanted and loved me, and cared for me, and kept me in health until the age of three or so. Then both my parents died. Whether they met death separately or together, from sickness or from an accident, I have no recollection. I find it difficult to believe they simply abandoned the child they had loved and cared for until then. Since I have neither records nor recollections of them, I can only assume they had no relatives or close friends, and their suddenly orphaned child somehow got overlooked. The East End was a crowded place—much more crowded then than now—and there were far too many homeless, parentless children about anyway. One more or less made no difference.
I must have wandered for a time, desperately seeking food and shelter, and I had the astonishing luck not only to survive but to escape the kind clutches of the various charitable organizations intended to succour children in my situation.
