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Cordelia Frost quietly wrote out bills for the services of Mr Mathey. The metaphysician himself sat across from her at his own desk not ten feet distant, busy with a recalcitrant music box which insisted upon playing “Champagne Charlie” backwards. The discordant notes had been stopped an hour ago by a merciful sigil of silence on the part of her employer, who dispelled it now and again to test whether his latest attempt at unraveling the problem had any effect. Thus far, he’d managed to speed it up, slow it down, and change the pitch by as much as two octaves, but nothing could yet induce it to play in the manner its maker intended.
Cordelia split her attention between tossing out ideas for the music box problem with Mr Mathey and attending his incoming and outgoing missives. Her mind still found space to wander to her evening plans. Madeleine Barton would doubtless like to divulge all the latest news from the Yard; one of the perks of being the new police matron of the Metaphysical Division. Cordelia wondered if her own tale of the mad music box would rank amongst whatever mischief Maddy had to tell her.
The door burst open—initially a surprise, as Cordelia knew Mr Mathey had no appointments scheduled, but it became far less of a surprise once Mr Lynes entered. For, as Cordelia had long ago surmised, Mr Lynes required no appointment.
“Miss Frost,” he said, tipping his hat towards her before removing it and turning to address his friend. “Got a particularly sticky problem, Ned.”
“As have I,” Mr Mathey grumbled, waving his wand to dismiss his latest failed attempt to repair the music box. “What’s the issue?”
Mr Lynes shifted the lumpy, oblong package under his left arm. “Miss Vane has vanished.”
Mr Mathey frowned. “The actress?”
Mr Lynes smiled wryly in response. “I take it you’re familiar with her work. But are you familiar with her mother, as well?”
Mr Mathey shook his head.
Cordelia, meanwhile, had an inkling. Miss Vane was a rising music hall star, and though hardly nineteen years old, had begun to put in credible performances in more respectable theatres portraying a variety of Shakespeare’s heroines; Juliet, Hermia, Ophelia…
While Cordelia herself didn’t often patronize the theatre in general, much less the stages where Miss Vane tended to appear, Maddy followed such news avidly, with the excuse that the offstage drama, even moreso than the onstage drama, gave her ample fuel for writing her romance novels. According to Maddy, Miss Vane’s surge of popularity was largely due to her mother, Mrs Vane, relentlessly pushing her daughter forward and promoting her without a shred of shame.
“Mrs Vane,” Mr Lynes explained for Mr Mathey’s benefit, “has laid out her daughter’s future to the last detail, including arranging for Miss Vane to...” He stopped suddenly with a glance at Cordelia, as if just remembering the presence of a woman in the office.
Cordelia assuaged his concerns with a smile. “To become Lord Harcourt’s mistress, if the rumors are to be believed.”
Mr Mathey coughed.
Rather than embarrassed, Mr Lynes appeared relieved. “Not just rumors. Mrs Vane told me herself that’s what she had planned for her girl.”
Moral campaigners often asserted that ballerinas, music hall girls, and actresses went astray for want of maternal guidance. But, Cordelia reflected, as the case of Miss Vane aptly proved, a mother's guiding hand could easily do as much harm as good.
“Which makes her daughter’s disappearance all the more distressing for her,” Mr Lynes continued dryly. “Miss Vane vanished from her dressing room last night, just after the curtain call for her Ophelia. Given her daughter’s line of work, Mrs Vane trusts me more than the police, and called upon me to visit the scene of the crime, as it were. Miss Vane left everything behind—clothes and all, nothing packed, nothing missing—including a bouquet from an admirer given to her onstage.”
“I’m happy to help,” said Mr Mathey, “but I’m confused as to what makes this a particularly metaphysical problem.”
“Mrs Vane insists upon an attempt to scry for her daughter through the bouquet.” Mr Lynes indicated the brown-paper package under his arm. His tone belied what he thought of the suggestion. Cordelia felt much the same way.
“In her defense,” Mr Mathey offered, “her daughter likely touched the bouquet within the last twenty-four hours.”
“Her and a dozen others,” Mr Lynes countered, echoing Cordelia’s own thoughts.
“Still,” said Mr Mathey, “I don’t suppose it would hurt to make the attempt.”
Privately, Cordelia agreed. When laymen got a bee in their collective bonnet about what metaphysics might accomplish, it was oftentimes more work to educate them on the limits of the field. Far quicker to try, or even simply pretend, to do what they’d asked, and let the lack of result speak for itself.
Mr Lynes laid the brown-paper package out upon Mr Mathey's desk. Mr Mathey unwrapped it. Faint notes of rose wafted through the office. Cordelia, her desk hardly a stone's throw away from her employer's, quickly caught the scent. It sparked memories of university, and flowers exchanged between schoolfriends. They'd called the small bundles tussie-mussies then. Talking bouquets.
Cordelia rose from her seat and came around to peer at the bouquet as Mr Mathey drew sigils over it with his wand. The usual methods appeared to have no effect. But her eyes weren't searching for metaphysical. Her gaze flitted from bloom to bloom. Miss Vane had received a motley collection of flora. Roses, naturally, white ones, but dried rather than fresh; as well as asphodel, primrose, spider flower, and straw flower, all wrapped up in soft maidenhair fern.
"Not cursed, at least," Mr Mathey concluded. "Though you're right, it's passed through many hands besides Miss Vane’s."
“Not Lord Harcourt’s,” said Cordelia.
Both gentlemen glanced up at her with expressions of bewilderment.
“He sent it through an intermediary, d’you mean?” asked Mr Mathey.
“I’d rather expect he would,” added Mr Lynes. “Gentlemen don’t often pick their own flowers by hand. Likely he didn’t even order them himself. Sent his secretary out to tell the florist to pick whichever blooms thought best and had it delivered by a shop assistant.”
“I very much doubt any florist would bring together dried roses, asphodel, and straw flower of their own accord,” said Cordelia.
Mr Lynes blinked at her.
Mr Mathey turned his attention back to the bouquet. “It does seem an odd combination—but then again, I haven’t an eye for aesthetics.”
“Neither did whoever chose these particular blooms,” Cordelia continued. “If, however, they wished to send a message...”
This piqued Mr Lynes’s interest at last. “What sort of message? Can you read it?”
“It’s been some time,” Cordelia admitted. “Most flowers convey some subtle variation on the general theme of love. New affection, constancy, the acceptance or rejection thereof. But as I recollect...” She studied the blooms again, not quite decided if it would be worse to be right or wrong in this instance. “Maidenhair fern calls for discretion, or secret love. A dried white rose indicates death is preferable to loss of virtue. Primrose declares, ‘I cannot live without you.’ And Asphodel means, ‘my regrets follow you to the grave.’”
Silence fell in the wake of her grim tidings.
“Don’t suppose Lord Harcourt is versed in the language of flowers?” said Mr Lynes.
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Mr Mathey admitted.
“Hence my hypothesis,” Cordelia concluded, “that he neither touched the bouquet directly, nor had anything to do with its assemblage, or its delivery.”
“A second admirer,” Mr Mathey supplied, following Cordelia's line of thought.
“A second, secret admirer,” Mr Lynes added.
“Scrying could trace which nursery produced the bouquet,” Cordelia suggested.
“And if they didn’t recall such an unusual arrangement,” said Mr Lynes, a victorious smile stealing over his features, “they would certainly have a receipt for whoever ordered those flowers delivered to Miss Vane’s dressing room.”
Mr Mathey, meanwhile, had already laid a map of London over the bouquet and sketched the necessary sigils with his silver-tipped wand. Chelsea lit up. A few more metaphysical maneuvers, and the glow narrowed to a single street.
“Fantastic!” declared Mr Lynes.
Cordelia, meanwhile, set her mind to spider flowers and straw flowers. There was something to them she couldn’t quite remember, a vital difference between broken and unbroken…
“Miss Frost,” Mr Mathey said suddenly, pulling her out of her private musings. “Would you mind accompanying us to the florist, and possibly beyond?”
Cordelia blinked at him. “My time is your object, Mr Mathey.”
Despite the fact that he’d done nothing more than make an entirely reasonable request which, as her employer, he was more than entitled to do, a slight pinkish hue came to Mr Mathey’s cheeks. “It’s only that, should we succeed in finding Miss Vane, I believe she might feel more comfortable if confronted by a lady as well as two gentlemen.”
The memory of what befell poor Miss Doyle in the Nevett case remained unspoken, yet palpably present in the office.
“Of course,” Cordelia replied.