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Mrs. Jamison is seventy years old. She was born the same month as Prince Leopold, in April of 1853. He was four years older than his sister, little Princess Beatrice, just as she was four years older than her brother. She only gets to the capital twice a year -- she lives in Manchester now, and has these thirty seven years -- at Christmas and at Easter when her son Bertie has her up. Bertie is a sweet darling, though it's a shame he's still a bachelor. So tidy and polite, but a bit too old to still be sharing rooms with a gentleman friend. She spends her birthday with Dottie -- Dorothy, that is -- her daughter in Manchester, except when Easter falls near her birthday.
This year it's the same week, and Bertie has promised her a truly elegant dinner somewhere beautiful. After he's done with work, of course. He's a barrister. He can't take the entire week off just when his mum's in town. Cases don't wait. But she wanted to do a bit of shopping anyway. There is a beautiful sale on linens at Harrod's. She wants sheets made up with a nice monogram -- MJD with the J big in the middle for Jamison. It's possibly wasteful, as they'll last twenty years and she won't, but she's an old woman and can spend her money where she wants.
And of course shopping leads to tea. It's so nice to put bags of this and that down. She's found a few more little necessities, though of course they'll have to send the sheets when they're done. But there are so many nice little things that are so difficult to find in the provinces. Manchester is still the provinces, even after thirty-seven years. And Harrod's is enormous fun, more so at Easter when the crowds aren't as thick. At Christmas it's such a mob.
A nice cup of tea, and a quiet moment to drink it at a little wicker table in the tea room, all the little tables done up like a conservatory with big potted palms. It's all women this time of day, girls with their knees showing in these new short dresses, a woman powdering her face and frowning into her compact mirror just as if she were at home rather than in Harrod's. It would be vaguely shocking if Mrs. Jamison were the kind to be easily shocked. Of course she's not. She got over all that a long time ago. She's always had more to her than it looked like.
The flapper at the fourth table has bobbed dark hair just to her chin, strong features and red lipstick, a smart black and white dress and black shoes that strap around her ankles. She's reading a stack of papers drawn from Manila envelopes, some of them handwritten, some of them newspaper clippings. You'd think she was a reporter or some sort of working girl, if Mrs. Jamison didn't know better. You'd also think she was thirty-five.
Mrs. Jamison gets up and walks over. "Hello, Helen."
She looks up, shock playing across her pretty face for a moment before denial falls like a mask. "I'm sorry," she says. "I don't know who you mean."
Mrs. Jamison sits down opposite her without being asked. "Dr. Helen Magnus. Don't you recognize me?"
She can't meet Mrs. Jamison's eyes. "Dr. Magnus was my aunt. I'm sure that's who you mean."
"I know perfectly well who you are," Mrs. Jamison says quietly and firmly, "And he's not dead, you know."
At that her eyes widen with shock, and there's no pretending that she doesn't understand. "Mary?"
Mrs. Jamison shrugs, a shrug that encompasses her black dress with buttons up the back, her laced shoes and her old-fashioned stockings. "I've changed a bit, haven't I? But then you're looking remarkably preserved for your age." There is a certain satisfaction in scoring on the oh so clever Helen, but she always did like her. "Don't you think it would be more discreet to go abroad?"
"I thought anyone who recognized me would simply think it was a family resemblance," Helen says, her aplomb somewhat returning. She tosses her bob defiantly. "I was abroad during the war, and when I came back I made the change. Out the old Dr. Magnus, and in with the new. A great niece, actually."
"Very clever," Mrs. Jamison says, gesturing to the waiter to bring her another cup of tea over here. "Anyone who marked a resemblance would think it simply wasn't possible. Anyone who didn't know."
And there is that closed look crossing her face again. "Didn't know what?"
"I know my brother is still alive and he doesn't look an iota different from the day he drowned. Dr. Watson, from the little I've seen of him, seems remarkably preserved as well. He ought to be in his dotage, but there he is speaking to the Royal Society, his picture in the paper, not looking a day past forty. So it's not much of a deduction, my dear."
"Your brother…" she stops as if words fail her.
"You needn't pretend he's dead," Mrs. Jamison says firmly. "I've spoken with him more than half a dozen times. The others all think he's gone, of course. They'd rather. Bad enough having the scandal without having Johnny around as well. They'd much prefer that he did throw himself in the Thames." She lifts her chin, waits until the waiter has put her tea down and busied himself with the pot and cup and other niceties. "Thank you."
Helen seems to have found her voice. "And you wouldn't?" she asks.
Mrs. Jamison carefully picks up one lump with the tongs. "He may be a raving lunatic, but he is my brother. God only knows he's hardly the only raving lunatic in the family. It's the Tyrrell blood, of course. Blood will out. Did you know that one of our ancestors killed the little princes in the tower? Smothered them in their sleep."
Helen smiles, casting her eyes down for a moment, and it transforms her face from something hard and powdered and rouged into more like the young woman she had been. "John was quite convinced of his innocence."
"Oh, Sir James killed them all right," Mrs. Jamison says, stirring the sugar gently to dissolving. "That was what you did with extra princes in those days. Now you just give them a nice little piece of central Europe, but it wasn't done that way in the fifteenth century. I know Johnny used to be quite dialectic about it. Calling Sir Thomas More a liar! He swore he'd have got Crookback Dick off if he'd been pleading his case at the bar, and I don't know about that. Johnny did have quite a way with a jury. But it's all his sympathy for the devil, my dear. We've a murderous streak a mile wide. Even Bertie did for forty or fifty in France, so he said when I asked him once, knelt down on the hearthrug with his face in my lap like a little lad and said he'd outdone the Ripper tenfold, only all legal and legitimate. Decorated for it too, not that he admits to it or wears it about or anything. Bertie just wants to forget it all ever happened, not that one can. The world moves on, my dear, and we have to keep up or get run over."
She stopped and took a sip of her tea. "That's better. There's nothing like a nice cup of tea, is there?" Helen was smiling at her. "What is it?"
"I'd forgotten how much I liked you," Helen said.
"Well, we were going to be sisters once. I shouldn't have minded another sister. You were obviously around the bend even then, but given that we're all in and out of the asylum I didn't know to expect any different." Mrs. Jamison took another sip. "I was the one who found Mother, you know."
"I do." Helen's face stills. "I was so sorry."
"Yes, you said so at the funeral." Mrs. Jamison puts her head to the side. "A terrible year, with that and then Johnny. I thought he was dead for five years, you know. And Clive -- you remember my husband, Clive, he passed on twelve years ago -- wouldn't let me name my firstborn John because he thought it would be ill omened, so we named him Walter instead. Not that it mattered, because he died when he was two of measles. He might as well have been named John. Anyway, it was the winter after Walter died, and I was feeling blue, just sinking into the melancholy we're prone to, and I couldn't sleep any more than an infant. I was sitting up one night by the fire in the empty nursery, and I looked about and there was Johnny. Well, I thought it was a vision and I asked him if he'd come to take me home. Do you know what he said, Helen?"
"I haven't the faintest," Helen says, and her voice sounds thick.
"He said, 'I'd rather take you to Rio, Mary. If you'll come.' And he stretches out his hand like the Angel of the Lord in a Pre-Raphaelite Annunciation -- Johnny always had the nicest manners -- and I took it and the next thing I knew we were in Carnivale in Rio de Janiero." She takes another sip. The tea is so soothing on the throat. "There's really nothing like style, is there?"
"I suppose not," Helen says.
"Popped me right out of my blues, let me tell you! A strange and wonderful secret no one knew but me. Of course the next day I was certain I'd gone entirely over the edge, but I frankly didn't care. He turns up now and again, never when I quite expect it, never changed. Sometimes he leaves me little things that I'll know are from him but I don't see him. He left me Peter Pan with a bookmark from a hotel in Cairo in it, marked to the last chapter -- 'oh Peter, I am so much more than twenty!' You know. When he comes back for Wendy and instead of being a girl she's a grown woman with a daughter of her own. He took me to Cairo last time when I said it was where I wanted to go. I can't ever admit that I've been of course, but at least I did get to see the pyramids. I've always wanted to, since we were children pouring over plates together." She stops. "Helen, dear, are you crying?"
"Of course not," Helen says, blinking furiously, but the streaks of her mascara don't lie.
"But?"
"How can you forgive him?" Her voice is sharp but cluttered with tears.
"I suppose I don't have to." Mrs. Jamison folds her hands carefully on her napkin. "He's insane, isn't he? The insane aren't responsible for their actions. It's not as though he murdered for gain. That would be indefensible. Besides," she says comfortably, "It was a long time ago. Why my granddaughter Fan told all the girls at her boarding school that her great-uncle was Jack the Ripper! It made her a celebrity for the better part of a week!" She looks at Helen keenly. "But then for me it's most of a lifetime come and gone. And for you it could be no more than five years. Yes, you've changed a bit. You've a line or two you didn't have and that's real, not makeup. But you're still a young woman with a young woman's passions while I'm the age we are. You've never moved on."
"I most certainly have," Helen begins.
"I'm sure you've done many incredible things. I'm sure you've been all sorts of places I'll simply die of envy if you tell me about. But you haven't married, have you? You haven't ever let go."
Her eyes drop, luminous eyes in such a young face. "I never gave back the ring, you see," she says, as though that means something. As though a token from a madman abjured thirty-five years ago is a binding pledge.
"Still waiting then," Mrs. Jamison says with satisfaction. "Still waiting for him to come to the window and whisk you away to Neverland. I'll tell him that next time I see him, if he comes again before I die."
"If he comes to my window I will shoot him," Helen says evenly.
"I imagine you will." Mrs. Jamison smiles. "I expect my mad brother will like that. He still loves you with all his obsessive little heart. Mad as hatters, the both of you! I always thought you quite deserved each other." She picks up her tea cup again, drops her tone to a whisper. "So tell me. Is Dr. Watson really a vampire? Or is that just a vicious rumor?"
At that Helen bursts out laughing, as she'd meant for her to. "No," she says, and her eyes are dancing. "James is not a vampire. But another of our circle is."
"Do tell." Mrs. Jamison leans forward.
Helen hesitates, then puts her head to the side, conspiracy lighting her smile. "It's a long story and involves any number of misadventures and harrowing escapes."
"I have nowhere to be until five-thirty," Mrs. Jamison says, and settles in. There's nothing quite like a cozy with someone of one's own age.