Copperhead

undependable, unreliable, and was going back to bed right now.

There was a clue in the carpetbag, the back of her mind told her. There was something she had seen and overlooked, distracted. No, not the train stubs.

The leather book—it was a journal. That handwritten list of names.

Helen pulled the journal out of the rough carpetbag and studied it. It was a faded maroon leather sleeve, soft with long use, that fit over bound paper. The red ribbon bookmark had fallen out when she shook it, but she turned the pages until she found the list of names that she remembered.

She skimmed the list, certain now that she knew what they were. It was The Hundred, as Jane called them. The list of women who were in danger. The Prime Minister’s wife. Lady Dalrymple. Monica Preston-Smythe—ooh, Helen hadn’t known that. A few men were sprinkled through, and a few people were known only by a first name. Other than that, it read like a society page, a who’s who of the most influential women in the city.

The names were written in ink, in Jane’s tiny precise hand. Helen flipped to the end of the names and saw that at the top of a clean page writing followed, a name followed by copious notes. Henrietta Lindcombe. She recognized that as the first facelift Jane had done. “Mrs. Lindcombe is nervous but I think I have talked her into it,” wrote Jane. “After she had that close encounter with a fey in the park she was a much easier catch. Before that it was all ‘I don’t believe the danger is what you say it is.’ I am reminded time and again that the war was fought in the country, and the city folk were never exposed to it. So many of the wealthy men paid others to go in their place. The war is a hundred miles away and five years gone, and the blue in the city are just another obstacle you learn to live with, like pickpockets. You avoid the waterfront for pickpockets; you wear an iron mask for the fey. You pretend that’s enough, and yet … If only all of them could be nearly attacked, they might be more willing to accede to what I know to be true and necessary!”

Helen skimmed the description until she saw the part that said “At last.” And then, a long description of how it had felt to perform her first facelift, on Mrs. Lindcombe. Helen shuddered and turned the page. The next page was also labeled with a name, the second one on the list, but it was blank beneath. Same with the next page, and the next. Helen flipped through several blank pages until she found the next page with writing on it. Millicent Grimsby.

But poor Millicent was not Jane’s second facelift. There were no dates on these, and Jane’s organizational system was meant to keep track of all the interactions Jane had had while trying to convince a particular woman to do the facelift—it wasn’t meant for someone trying to sort out a timeline to find Jane after she had vanished.

Helen flipped through the book. The pages were ordered by the list of women, which was the same list as at the beginning. Each one was numbered. She did not know if that was the order that Mr. Rochart had done their faces, but whatever it was, it was certainly not the order in which Jane was removing them.

Helen sighed. This was why she had married Alistair, among other reasons. She just wasn’t any use at focused concentration like this, sorting through the details. This was a matter for the police—if the police weren’t firmly in Copperhead’s pocket, that was. She didn’t dare expose her sister to the charges of murder. No, it was all up to Helen, but how could she possibly hope to solve this mystery?

She shook her head. That was a ridiculous way to think. She might be a fool and a coward, but she was a stubborn one, and Jane needed her. I have my own plans, Jane had said. You convince The Hundred.

Helen would.

So what did she know? She knew Jane had completed some facelifts. Six, she thought Jane had said. Helen was not sure—but surely this journal knew.

Helen pulled out a pad and pencil, flipped to the beginning of the book, and began writing down every name that had notes under it. The ones that had the additional notes about the facelift she crossed back out.

It turned out that Jane had indeed done a half-dozen facelifts. Helen spent a few minutes trying to decide whether to strike through poor Millicent Grimsby’s name or not and in the end drew a soft wiggly line through it with the lead, whispering an apology under her breath.

That left her with eighteen women with notes underneath. Eighteen women that Jane had tried and failed to impress upon the need for changing their face.

Jane had definitely needed her help.

Helen found the first of those attempted women in the book and glanced at the end of the entry.

“Terrible afternoon,” read the journal. “Agatha Flintwhistle threw me out on my ear and threatened to sic the police upon me if I so much as walked on the other side of the sidewalk from her. I am not entirely certain what I said, but she seems to be convinced that allowing me to help her would lead down ‘the slippery path of sin into suffrage and other such nonsense.’ At that point I flat-out said that I would be very glad to see women get the vote, if for no other reason than that they could think about something other than the cut of their hair for once. (Her bob was set with so much of that smelly fixative nonsense that when she shook her head, not one single piece moved.) That was when the police and the sidewalk, &c, were mentioned. I think I will not be going back for a time.”

Helen laughed an oh dear sort of laugh. Jane had really, really needed her.

She went through all the women who had notes but no record of finishing with facelifts. Many of the entries ended in disaster like the first one. Helen knew most of these women socially—some even more so. When she read about Louisa Mayfew being standoffish to Jane, she muttered under her breath, no, no, Jane! That’s not how you manage her. First you tell her how much you like the piano. Then the parlor. Then that snot rag of a child. Then she’ll be eating out of your hand. You don’t barge in like a schoolteacher and try to tell a Mayfew what to do.

If Jane—no, when Jane made it back safely, Helen was going straight around to all these folks with her and mending fences. They were all ripe for the picking and didn’t even know it.

It seemed as though there were only two entries left that didn’t end in success or disaster. They were Rosemary Higgins and Calendula Smith. Rosemary was noted as “abroad but promised to speak with me upon return,” but what really caught Helen’s eye was at the end of Calendula Smith’s entry, where Jane mentioned “after this encounter, the next woman will be a piece of cake.”

That is, if Helen was reading that right, Calendula Smith was the last woman (except for Millicent) that Jane had tried to convince before her untimely disappearance. And while Frye thought Jane had just gone to ground, Helen couldn’t help but feel that Jane would have tried to contact her by now. Besides, there was that ransacked flat and death threat.

She couldn’t bear to think that something had happened to Jane, so she firmly told herself that Jane was in hiding, exactly as Frye thought. And therefore, she was to follow Jane’s words: You have one purpose for the next week. Convince every last one of them.

All the same, why not kill two birds with one stone? If Helen was going to convince The Hundred for Jane, she had to start somewhere. It didn’t seem too likely that pillar-of-society Calendula Smith would have threatened Jane with a torn-paper note and then had her abducted, merely for the insult of asking Calendula to take her old face back. But Calendula might know something. Jane hadn’t even told Helen about the death threat, but maybe she had let something slip to someone.

Calendula was the perfect place to start.

By now Helen had finished the chocolate and toast, and she felt much less muddled. She felt alive and engaged again, the way she had last night when Frye had told her she could move mountains. She was going to find Jane—going to have The Hundred primed and ready for her—and then everything, surely everything, would be right as rain.

The door opened and Alistair poked his head in.

Helen did not jump, but her fingers on the journal did, tensing up into little mountains. Had he checked in on her bedroom? Did he know she had been out? She slid the journal under the covers as he crept around the door, looking woebegone.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, coming up to the foot of the bed and twining his fingers around the iron rails. A cloud of lavender soap and ambergris drifted in with him. “I was in shock last night from that horrible disaster. And then I had some whiskey to soften the blow. I believe I yelled at you in the motorcar?” He looked up at her under his lashes and she softened. She was safe after all. And it was so hard to be mad at him when he put on his penitent little-boy face. Because it wasn’t just a face, she knew. He really did mean it. He truly was sorry.