Victorian Villainy Read Free

sister Lucinda Moys and a physical education instructor named Crisboy, who, choosing to live away from the college for reasons of his own, rented a pair of rooms on the top floor. There was a small guest house at the far end of the property which was untenanted. The owner of the property, who had moved to Glasgow some years previously, kept it for his own used on his occasional visits to town. The Maples employed a cook and a maid, both of whom were day help, sleeping in their own homes at night.
    Andrea was a fine-looking woman who appeared to be fearlessly approaching thirty, with intelligent brown eyes set in a broad face and a head of thick, brown hair, which fell down her back to somewhere below her waist when she didn’t have it tied up in a sort of oversized bun circling her head. She was of a solid appearance and decisive character.
    Her sister, “Lucy” to all who knew her, was somewhat younger and more ethereal in nature. She was a slim, golden-haired, creature of mercurial moods: usually bright and confident and more than capable of handling anything the mean old world could throw at her, but on occasion dark and sullen and angry at the rest of the world for not measuring up to her standards. When one of her moods overtook her, she retired to her room and refused to see anyone until it passed, which for some reason the young men of the college found intensely romantic. She had an intent manner of gazing at you while you conversed, as though your words were the only things of importance in the world at that instant, and she felt privileged to be listening. This caused several of the underclassmen to fall instantly in love with her, as she was perhaps the first person, certainly the first woman aside from their mothers, who had ever paid serious attention to anything they said.
    One of the underclassmen who was attracted by Miss Lucy’s obvious charms was Mr. Sherlock Holmes. She gazed at him wide-eyed while he spoke earnestly, as young men speak, of things that I’m sure must have interested her not in the least. Was it perhaps Holmes himself who interested the pert young lady? I certainly hoped so, for his sake. Holmes had no sisters, and a man who grows up without sisters has few defenses against those wiles, those innocent wiles of body, speech and motion, with which nature has provided young females in its blind desire to propagate the species.
    I was not a close observer of the amorous affairs of Lucy Moys, but as far as I could see she treated all her suitors the same; neither encouraging them nor discouraging them, but enjoying their company and keeping them at a great enough distance, both physically and emotionally, to satisfy the most demanding duenna. She seemed to me to find all her young gentlemen vaguely amusing, regarding them with the sort of detachment one finds in the heroines of Oscar Wilde’s plays, to use a modern simile.
    Professor Maples took the in loco parentis role of the teacher a bit further than most of the faculty, and certainly further than I would have cared to, befriending his students, and for that matter any students who desired to be befriended, earnestly, sincerely and kindly. But then he seemed to truly care about the needs and welfare of the young men of Wexleigh. Personally I felt that attempting to educate most of them in class and at tutorials was quite enough. For the most part they cared for nothing but sports, except for those who cared for nothing but religion, and were content to allow the sciences and mathematics to remain dark mysteries.
    Maples and his wife had “at home” afternoon teas twice a month, the second and fourth Tuesdays, and quite soon these events became very popular with the students. His sister-in-law, who was invariably present, was certainly part of the reason, as was the supply of tea-cakes, scones, fruit tarts, and other assorted edibles. I attended several of these, and was soon struck by an indefinable feeling that something was not what