The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets by Nancy Springer Page A

huge-eyed from his hiding place inside one of the crates (meant for displaying dry goods) flanking the closed door of the corner chandler. Standing where I was, I had unknowingly blocked his escape, but I might never have seen him had he not cried out.
    “No, please, don’t!” he wailed.
    I stood, immobilised by astonishment, with a hand at each side of my wig. “Don’t what ?” I blurted. I could not imagine what he was so afraid of.
    He shrieked, “Don’t take yer ’air off! Don’t take yer nose off either!”
    “Oh,” I said, nodding slowly and wisely, as if he had explained everything. Obviously the boy was a halfwit and needed to be approached cautiously. Taking care to make no sudden movements, as if faced with a cornered animal, I let my wig lapse back onto my head in whatever fashion it so desired. “All right,” I added in easy, soothing tones. “No harm done. Would you like a penny?” Reaching into a pocket, I pulled out a handful of coins.
    Hearing the jingling sound and catching sight of the shiny metal, the lad seemed to calm, or at least to shift the focus of his anxiety, as I had thought he might.
    “I just want to talk with you a moment. Will you come out?” I coaxed.
    “No!”
    “Why, then, I’ll come in, if you don’t mind.” I simply plopped myself down to sit on the pavement in front of the crate within which he cowered. Fatigue alone, I think, would not have made me do this—although I was indeed quite fagged from running—but I found the absurdity of the situation irresistible. All around me I heard horrified gasps arise from onlookers, and I sensed how they stepped away, as if my extraordinary conduct might spread some sort of contagion. Just two years before, during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, a lady had sat down on one of the pathways within the Crystal Palace in order to place a sprig of fir into the top of her boot; not long afterwards she had been committed to a madhouse.
    By her husband. Not uncommonly a woman might be put away in a lunatic asylum for insane conduct such as reading novels, going to spiritualist meetings, quarreling, failure to obey, et cetera. Having one’s wife taken off by “body snatchers” in a black barouche was a respectable recourse should her presence become onerous, whereas divorce was a scandal.
    It was quite a good thing that I planned to have no husband, I thought, smiling and still panting from “running mad.” Seated knee-to-knee with my quarry as if we were two children playing teatime, I told the filthy little street savage, “How do you do. I am very pleased to meet you.” As if selecting a bonbon, I lifted a penny between my fingers. “I could not help observing your taking quite a lovely bouquet of flowers to the Watson residence just now.”
    Warily the boy countered, “Don’t know no Watson,” but his gaze had fixed on the copper coin.
    “How did you know which house, then?”
    “The man told me the number.”
    “What man?”
    “Why, the man ’oo took off ’is nose.”
    My mind began to feel as fagged as my legs, but I only nodded slowly and sagely once more, deciding to circumvent the nasal improbability for the time being. “And how did you happen to meet this man?”
    “’E called me over.” The lad demonstrated a beckoning gesture such as any person of any consequence might use to summon any boy loitering in the street if the latter was wanted to carry a parcel, take a message, hold a horse by the reins or render any simple service.
    “Was he in a gig or a dog-cart?” I inquired.
    “No! ’E were in a right shiny carriage, ’e were, wit’ orses.”
    Refraining from telling him that a dog-cart was also a horse-drawn vehicle, I merely asked, “A phaeton? A brougham?”
    “Don’t know ’bout no broom. A fine black carriage it were, with yellow spokes to the wheels.”
    A description which could apply to half the vehicles in London. I tried again. “Did you see a coat-of-arms?”
    “Sure, ’e had a