Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 151, Nos. 1 & 2. Whole Nos. 916 & 917, January/February 2018

I shook my head, full of sorrow for the girl but disturbed by the fury and despair of the gesture. “I’m not sure how she thought this would help,” I said. “Having a constant reminder of the moment of your heartbreak sitting on your sofa looking at you? What a twisted idea! Unless,” I was struck by a sudden insight, “it’s a Dorian Grey painting thing but in reverse... you know... you stitch your sorrow into this image, lovely but doomed to suffer forevermore. Catharsis, would that be the word? You put it on display and then the real you is unencumbered, set free to get on with the rest of your life.”

“Sorrow? No. I think we’re looking at a much more dynamic emotion. It was stitched with hatred. A curse in every stitch. And I doubt Rosa had the subtlety a modern mind might give her credit for. This was before Freud had made such an impression. People didn’t realise they had a psyche, a superego, an id, or a complex to worry about. No, if I’m right, this was done for a much simpler motive: vengeance. She made no secret of her past. She was — I’ve said — no recluse. This girl was no Miss Havisham, to live out her days maundering about in the dark. She led a lively and sociable life with a wide circle of friends in... Mayfair, I believe. And whenever anyone visited and admired the doll, she’d tell them the story. Never failing to mention the name of her backsliding lover. The wretched man’s name was a byword and a hissing in society for years afterwards.”

“Are you going to tell me his name?”

He frowned. “Harry... Harry something. Now what was his surname? Perhaps history’s at last drawn a veil over it?”

“No. It hasn’t. She hasn’t! She’s not let him go yet. Look at this, Tom!”

I took a small piece of gilt-edged card from my bag. “It was stitched so, so carefully into a pocket on the cambric underskirt.”

Tom studied it for a moment. “It’s a dance card! Headed: The Governor’s Christmas Ball, Calcutta 1907. Good grief, Ellie! Over a hundred years ago. And she’s written in the names of all the blokes who’d booked a dance with her.” His hand began to shake with some emotion as he read. “Oh, this is heartbreaking! I don’t think I can bear it!”

“Seems to have been a popular girl! There’s a name by every dance.”

“Yes. Look at number four — the veleta — she’s dancing it with Minto, no less! Blimey! She must have been well regarded.”

“Minto?”

“Lord Minto, Governor-General of India. One of the most powerful men in the world! Curzon’s replacement. And here, tucked away in the second waltz slot there’s a brigadier general... obviously a chance to impress her fiancé’s boss.”

“You’re skating round the obvious, Tom. The name that appears against all the other dances. The man she never did dance the last waltz with: Captain Harry Langridge. Langridge. There, I’ve said his name out loud. I feel as though I’ve resurrected the poor chap.”

“You have. This man was the younger brother of the Langridge of the day... the Suffolk Langridges. The local lords of the manor. Harry didn’t inherit. In fact, I think he was only third in line to the title, but he had an impressive pedigree. A proud name.”

I looked with a sudden flash of anger at the heart-shaped face presiding over our enquiry. She was smiling into the middle distance with something very like satisfaction. No! I pulled myself up at once. The smile was my doing. It had been a mistake — an overreach to restore the mouth. I’d done my best to repair the flaking paint, happy with the way I’d replicated the original musk-rose colour. But in spite of my restraint, the sweetly curving lips had taken on a freshness, a fullness, and, I now realised, a slight upward turn at one corner which was looking very like a smile of triumph.

I had an uneasy feeling that Tom was unwilling to return the card to me. He palmed it in his large hand and looked away shiftily. I held out my hand for it and, grudgingly, he gave it back. “Poor Captain Langridge!” he said. “Not sure she should be allowed to do this to him again...”

“You know what happened to him, don’t you?”

“Well, of course, he died. And very shortly after these events. He went off with his regiment under a considerable cloud. The other officers closed ranks and ostracised him. No one objected to a bit on the side in their world, they were all at it, but what stuck in their craw was the very public way it had all come out. Affianced girl in tears running, insulted, from the ballroom... ditching this innocent English rose on account of a native girl... acknowledging his half-caste child... it simply was not acceptable.