At my puzzled look, Holmes explained. ‘There is a kind of private police force run by proctors from the University. In the interest of keeping “moral order”, they arrest random young women seen to be consorting with students after curfew. An indiscriminate sweep, I am told. Many are shopgirls, servants, innocent working girls. They hold them without charges in private prison called the Spinning House.’

And in our modern times! I thought. What an outrage.

‘That could be dangerous,’ continued Holmes. ‘Have you been stopped before, Polly? Perhaps on an errand for your mistress?’

Polly nodded and looked down, ashamed. ‘’Tweren’t her fault, sir. I was stupid. I stopped to ask directions and a young man … he … he started to show me the way, and I were arrested.’ The trembling increased, and a tear escaped her eye and ran down her face. She swiped it away. ‘It was a close one, sir. I was let off with a warnin’.’

I wanted to know more of these ‘proctor’s men’, but Holmes pressed on.

‘That was fortunate. Yet you risked another arrest last night? Why did you go alone to your mistress?’

‘Miss Odelia, she wanted Mr Buttons not to know where she was.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘That was brave of you. Polly, your mistress may be in a bit of trouble.’

The maid looked at her feet and refused to reply.

‘Help us to help her,’ Holmes whispered.

Polly stole a glance up at him. It was telling, even to my eyes.

‘Hello,’ came a low-pitched, female voice from the doorway.

CHAPTER 14

Atalanta

We turned to see a tall, willowy young woman with short, curly dark hair, clothed in an expensive lacy nightgown and velvet dressing gown. Her face was translucently pale, and while nearly my height, she was slender and wiry, with something of the woodland sprite about her. Not exactly beautiful, but striking in her way. The older sister, of course. I wondered why she was still abed at this hour. Her eyes shone with either fever or something else. That and her short hair suggested she might be suffering or recovering from some illness.

She placed a hand on either side of the doorway, her voluminous, lace-trimmed sleeves flopping back, revealing finely muscled porcelain arms. She smiled at us in an overly bright manner I found unnerving.

Except for the mother, these Wyndhams were all of a kind with their studied posturing, I thought.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, taking in both of us.

‘Atalanta Wyndham, I presume?’ said Holmes, glancing up from where he was examining Odelia’s shoes with an air of distraction.

‘I am she.’

He shrugged and returned to his inspection of a fine silk slipper.

‘Have we awakened you?’ I asked.

‘No,’ the young woman said. ‘But I write, you see, sometimes all night long. Now, about you, sirs. Are you from the police?’