Chasing Portia Adams

Stalking the Sleuth

The frigid London morning has me dancing from one foot to the other to stay warm. My hands are buried deep in the pockets of this old jacket, the gloves not warm enough to keep my fingers from going numb.

For the third day in a row, I've kept this vigil, waiting for a girl I've never met for a story that might never be published. But what choice did I have? Join the breadlines full of my desperate neighbours who would spend their time in the cue debating my shame in hushed tones? The thought of breadlines brings to mind the last time I had a full meal and my stomach growls in protest.

My mind rebels against capitulation. I was once the pride of Spital St., the youngest reporter at the prestigious Sunday Times until... I shake my head out of bad memories. My movement makes me notice the slim figure bent in front of the burned-out house at the end of the block. At last!

I force my icy limbs to move, stalking my prey as she moves silently about the ruins. She doesn't notice me at first, so absorbed in her own thoughts, and I have the opportunity to observe her features. A tall woman with a lean build, with money enough to buy new clothes but not enough wit to put them together into a cohesive look. Her skin is as pale as mine, but her hair is a dark brown and woven in a simple plait that hangs almost to her waist.

It is only when she raises her face towards me that I recalled the words of the butler at the Barclay estate. 'Spooky eyes full of fire' was how he had described her, and when she turns those darkly fringed blue orbs my way, I can see what he had meant. 

"Good morning, Miss Adams." I say in greeting.

"Good morning, Miss...?" she answers with a question, her voice deeper than mine.

"Coleson. Annie Coleson, and you're not ... what I expected," I reply honestly, extending my gloved hand. Portia Adams is much younger than I thought she would be, younger than me by a few years I would guess, and her accent markedly colonial. I wonder when she moved to London.

"Really?" she asks, her eyes running over me.

"You're an American," I say, guessing at her origins. My experience with non-European accents embarrassingly light.

She sighs before answering, perhaps annoyed with the assumption. "Canadian, actually — from Toronto."

Before I can apologize for the mistake though, she continues. 

"Seems a few days late to be covering this story, Miss Coleson," she says, pointing to the rubble around us. "Does The Sunday Times have column inches it needs to fill this week?"

My heart speeds up at her words - she is the woman I have been searching for! Determined not to be outwitted at our first meeting, I return with "No more strange than London's newest consulting detective walking a crime scene a week after the crime was committed."

Her chin comes up, and I mimic the action, two can play at this game, my girl. 

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Miss Coleson. I am just an interested student of the law."

I do my best to stop my smirk before answering, "Then we have been deceived by Miss Elaine Barclay — most troubling."

Another sigh.

"Ah yes, Miss Barclay's interview. She was not to identify anyone but the police in the solution of her case, and the title she bestowed upon any other party involved is not one I seek to be identified with."

Curioser and curiouser. So Portia Adams actually didn't want the credit for her crime-fighting work?

"I am sure the lady only meant to give credit where credit is due," I reply, pulling a notebook out of my pocket. "If not for your aid, her brother James would have surely succeeded in his plan to frame her for their father's murder. I tried to get access to James in jail but have had no luck so far. I think Londoners would be interested in how he came up with the ingenious idea of applying poison to his father's books. Regardless, if you wish to dispute Elaine Barclay's characterization, or perhaps give your preferred title..."

She smiles at me, transforming her from a plain girl to a heart-stopping beauty, and shakes her head. "You will excuse me, Miss Coleson?"

She turns, dismissing me, so she can continue her exploration of the scene

That gets my back up. I may be a disgraced reporter, but I am still a member of the free press. I should be taken seriously. This woman is rude and arrogant, but I am persistent. I follow her around the site, tamping down my anger, and ignoring the cold as best I can.

I need to make her engage with me. Perhaps there is a way to play upon her ego.

As she turns to me to mock me with a tip of her hat, I blurt out "Miss Barclay never identified you by name, you know."

"I know," she calls back over her shoulder, not breaking her stride as she walks away from me.

I catch up with her longer legs "All she told Henry was that she had been saved by 'London's newest consulting detective.'" I was referring to my former colleague Henry Rees' piece in The Sunday Times, in which he had interviewed Elaine Barclay on the conviction of her brother for the murder of their father a few months ago.

"I know," she repeated, maddeningly. 

"Aren't you the least bit curious as to how I managed to track you down, Miss Adams?"

That stopped her, and she looked up and down the street before replying. She has an odd way about her, this woman. Stiff and unfriendly, but in an innocent way. Perhaps she is not as arrogant as she is unused to being out socially? 

"The same way I knew you were a journalist by the wear on your glove fingers where you hold a pen," she says "and that you write for The Sunday Times by the size of note-book you drag in and out of that poor coat pocket of yours. I know the notebooks they hand out to their reporters are oddly large."

I hedge, anticipating that I am about to lose my grip on the story of a lifetime, "You know the size of every notebook used by each newspaper?"

"And where the notebooks are made, yes," she says. "Did you perchance speak to the lead detective on the case?"

I nod, remembering my brief but illuminating chat with Sergeant Michaels. "But he didn't tell me!"

"No, he wouldn't have," Portia says, flashing another smile. "But did he perhaps downplay the involvement of anyone outside his own department? Making you even more curious?"

I nod again. This woman may be rude and socially awkward, but her mind works at lightning speed. Between the cold and the fact that I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday, I struggle to keep up.

"Being a woman in a male-dominated field, you guessed that his defensiveness stemmed not from pure jealousy — he was happy to share credit with the members of his team — but from being uncomfortable with the sex of the help," She continues waving at a cabbie down the street. "You are wrong about that, by the way, though it was a fair presumption. In any case, that guess of yours narrowed the field considerably, I would think. Now you needed a list of women who had been in contact with the Barclays during the solution of the crime. Probably a list of new female acquaintances rather than ongoing."

This was moving far too quickly, and I wasn't ready for her confident deconstruction of my methods but the cab pulled up beside us before I could find the words to keep her with me.

"I suppose the only mystery left is whom at the Barclay household you coaxed a list out of — the maid or the butler?" She says, opening the door to the cab. "Myself, I am leaning toward the butler, who didn't seem to like me very much."

She closes the car door after her, and leans out the window to dismiss me once last time.

"Regardless, I would appreciate never being mentioned in your fine paper, Miss Coleson. Good Day."