The house of Miss Mabel Burgess was far more impressive than that of Mrs. Sheppard. It towered on top of the hill, looking down the valley at less fortunate and deserving houses. Miss Burgess had apparently been born to money as well as the suffrage movement. Quite the potent combination!
Eliza rang the doorbell, was admitted, and dropped her calling card onto the tray offered to her by a rather elderly maidservant.
She was shown into the library while the card was delivered, and only had to wait a few moments before the maid returned at quite a lively pace. She was then ushered into the receiving parlour of Miss Burgess.
Eliza had never had the honour of meeting such a prominent and wealthy member of the movement. For some reason it was as if they thought she couldn’t be trusted to behave around such ladies. On consideration, it probably because of an incident with the Mayoress of Palmerston North—but that woman was certainly no lady. However today was different. Today Eliza was on her best behaviour.
Miss Burgess sat in a sea of lace and faded beauty on a rose coloured chaise longue. Her smile was so soft and kindly that it was hard to imagine she had any bitterness towards her lot in life. Money would do that—make up for a lot of difficulties. Yet, Eliza had heard the stories. She knew that in her time Miss Burgess had been a powerful and committed suffragist. She’d broken windows, and even flown an ornithopter to the top of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to hang a gaily coloured pennant from the rooftops. It had proudly proclaimed, ‘Same life, same rights!’
Now that she was supposedly in her dotage, she had been no less ardent in New Zealand—doing her bit and flummoxing men.
Yet, three weeks ago she had withdrawn her considerable personal and financial support from the movement, stopped replying to missives from the Council and shut herself away. She rose to greet Eliza and smiled endearingly. “Miss Braun, is it? I hear you are working for the Ministry of Public Health…my goodness what a job for a lady!”
Eliza could not have been more surprised if Miss Burgess had jumped up and done the can-can on her sideboard. Kate was right—there was something seriously wrong here.
Still, she managed to not let any of her shock show on her face. Instead, she took the offered seat and tried to imagine herself into a role in which the prime danger was from paper-cuts. Flicking open her leather case, Eliza rummaged through it and pulled out a piece that she had only typed up this morning.
“Miss Burgess,” she put on her most stern voice, borrowed from her mother, “I have come to enquire as to your contact with Mr. Henry Smith Fish.”
“Pardon?” the old lady looked positively white at questioning before even one cup of tea had been drunk. “How did you—”
“Find out you had entertained him?” Eliza smiled, glad that her hunch had paid off. In Dunedin if there was anything anti-suffragist going on, Mr. Fish was at the bottom of it. She fixed the lady of the house with a steely gaze, and quite wished she had found a pair of spectacles to peer over. “This is a small town you know, and people do talk?”
“But why would the Ministry of Public Health be interested in…” Miss Burgess paused, and then clenched her fingers around the arm of her chair. “Oh my…” she breathed, and then shook her head. “No, I can’t possibly think that of Mr. Fish.” The elderly lady was being far too kind—Fish was known throughout the town as quite the reprobate.
Eliza was smiling on the inside. She didn’t care a jot if Henry Smith Fish’s reputation was sullied—besides in its current state that was rather unlikely. “Well, I can’t really say, Miss Burgess—but I need to know the details of his visit. It puzzles me you see, since you used to be such an ardent suffragist that you would let him cross your threshold.”
Her host folded her hands on her lap. “Yes, I used to be. I recall not being entirely happy when he turned up on my doorstep.” She frowned. “But I eventually called for tea and listened to him. He was quite pleasant talking about a purchase he had made for his wife.”
“That was all you talked about?” Eliza frowned, her hands tightening on the fake piece of paper. “Not about your interest in the suffrage movement?”
Miss Burgess’ head jerked upright. “Why on earth would we talk about that?” Her lip actually curled. “No, he had a tinker make this very strange, but rather beautiful bracelet for Edna.”
That Henry Smith Fish, renowned cad and dilettante should have done any such thing, let alone made a point of showing it to Miss Burgess of all people, set Eliza’s instincts buzzing. “If you don’t mind me asking, what did this bracelet look like?”
The old lady’s eyes seemed to cloud over. “It was quite lovely; all brass surrounding these stunning cobalt blue pieces of glass. It was quite strange, but Mr. Fish put it on his own wrist to show me better how it glowed. There was even this very strange noise…”
Eliza swallowed hard. The Ministry had been wondering what happened to the circlet of Delilah. The pieces of the shattered enamelled diadem had been on loan to the British museum from the Ministry Archives simply because the circlet had been so broken that its manipulative powers had been ended. It seemed Mr Fish had found a way to use a bit of modern technology to get them back.
Looking into the clouded eyes of Miss Burgess, Eliza knew what she had to do, and it involved slugging Mr Henry Smith Fish in the jaw before he could turn it on her. It was now of the utmost importance.