Lost & Found

An Alaric Germaine Mystery

This short story¹ was originally published in the Summer 2025 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine, available here.

The light fell, dappled, upon the spines of the antique books which lined the walls, casting long veiled shadows in the flat. Chief-Inspector Dickinson of Scotland Yard sat at repose in a large armchair over one of those shadows.

“How are things, and all that?” asked the owner of the flat, coming in from the other room.

“There was another burglary last night in Bloomsbury. Dashed vexing,” he sighed.

“Ah, the price the good men of the English police force pay to keep the rest of us safe in our beds.”

”It’s a dog’s life, Alaric,” said Dickinson mopedly.

The flat-owner, a well-cut gentleman in a suit, smiled at him.

“Cheer up, old chap. Have a sandwich. Copeland makes excellent sandwiches.”

He reached out and rang the bell. This resulted in the entrance of a stony-faced servant with a platter of sandwiches and an envelope on a silver tray.

“A letter for you, sir.”

“Thank you, Copeland.”

Alaric took the letter opener and began working on the seal. Dickinson, slightly more cheerful, attacked the sandwiches proffered to him by the manservant.

When his friend’s features lit up, he stopped and asked, “Good news?”

“My sister is getting married.”

“You never told me you have a sister!”

“She lives in the States, and I haven’t seen her in quite some time. Anyway, it shan’t be long before you do meet the soon-to-be Clare Middleston. She says she’s coming to London.”

“London? When?”

“Next week, dear Chief-Inspector, and I am to call at Audley Square to see her.”

Dickinson looked thoughtful. “But why is she in London if she lives in the States?”

“Middleston is a man of the old country. Or rather, his family is. I believe he was raised by his older sister and her husband, who crossed the pond early on. However, as is the wont of these ancient families, he is in possession of an aged aunt of great wealth. Middleston is a banker in Massachusetts. Anyhow, the aunt, it seems, has settled a rather tidy sum on him and he is to come and sign papers. Clare is also, I understand, settled to have a family heirloom: her wedding ring. An altogether full programme for a visit to one’s mother country, but a worthy one.”

“Do you like Middleston?”

“Oh, yes. He and my sister have been attached for some years, but Clare was at school and couldn’t be married till now.”

“How old is she?”

“Exactly as old as myself, give and take a few minutes. We are twins. What, surprised? We aren’t peas of pods, you know. Sun and moon, what, Apollo and Artemis. Or Viola and Sebastian. Whatever you like.”

---

And so it was that Dickinson found himself striding through Hyde Park the following Saturday, contemplating what Alaric had told him over the telephone that morning. Germaine had been incoherent, characteristically so. But one thing was certain. The heirloom which had supposed to have been Clare Germaine’s was missing, and would the Chief-Inspector come and assist him?

Arriving at the house in Audley Square, murmuring that it was all very well for an aristocrat to take his time but that a policeman had a schedule to follow, and that he just might take that post overseas if this went on, he had found his first surprise from Alaric. Despite what the latter had said to the contrary, Dickinson had found the sister to be identical to the brother: both siblings tall and dark with piercing eyes and a cool but striking manner.

“You must be Miss Germaine,” he had said stupidly, stricken from articulate words by this manner. The maid, he noticed, too looked stupefied. It seemed she was tracking soil into the house. There was some kind of briar tangled on her apron hem.

The lady had smiled. “Ah, and you must be the Chief-Inspector, the man from Scotland Yard. Alaric is in the Park.”

Thus, walking down the path, he finally caught sight of his friend, on his knees and evidently scrutinizing the rose garden bed.

“Ho!”

Alaric looked up.

“Ho, faithful friend. A stroll ‘round this garden is in order, that you may view the principal parts. Kindly observe the bees, they are very nice. Vergil would like them. What, did you run here? Maybe there is something, after all, in what is said of the habits of bobbies.”

“I am not out of breath,” Dickinson said shortly, very hot in the face, indignantly staring at the bed in question and adding, “and that is not a bee on that flower–it’s got a bit of sunshine, that’s all.”

His friend looked at the flower and then at him sharply, in some surprise. He seemed to come to a conclusion for he swiveled his gaze back to the ground and said:

“The ring was lost sometime between nine and half past eleven. The family was in the drawing room for most of that time. It was not dropped–”

“–given that we are here–”

“—it, if you will pardon the expression—”

“–Alaric–”

“—it was snatched.”

“By whom?”

“The drawing-room maid, I think. Tryin’ to bungle the wedding. Much taken with Middleston, you see. But you must have seen the mud and leaves on the sole of her shoes. And the thorns on her apron. We shall find Clare’s ring here, never fear. You simply must know where to look.”

“Did you take detection by correspondence?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, where did you learn this? You’ve helped me before with cases but this is a new thing entirely.”

“Come, prithee, and I will tell thee my ways. Come, see this flower.” He shot down to his knees, pointing to a seemingly random flower in the next bed. Dickinson, thinking this no doubt was a non sequitur, went down too.

“Long ago in my school days, when Clare and I were children, we used to summer at the Lakes, in Ambelside. We could do what we liked, our parents told us, so long as we were with our governess. Ah, but our governess was a jewel among her kind–too old to be illusioned and too young to be unfeeling. Day after day we would walk the District over with her, and we had many friends. Clare used to have tea with a girl of six, every morning, with one who wrote stories and painted rabbits. It was this friend who taught us the ways of animals at the Lakes. We had another friend, who taught me all I know. She gave me the eyes to see with which I now occupy with the solving of mysteries.

Every day, Dickinson, was a new lesson and a new adventure. Music we heard performed in abundance, and it was she who lent me my first novel by Sir Walter Scott. What hours, happy ones, that Clare and I spent with her outside, looking at the world and learning its name. She gave us journals for our birthday and taught us to paint what we saw in them, which at first we did not often do well in the beginning, but the drawings were always lovingly precise. So many things go unseen, but every flower and every bird is important and has a purpose.

And it is this training which has shaped the way I handle a case. What we learned in Ambleside has meant more than what I have learned anywhere else–that everything is related and that that is how everything is learned. Knowing that was how I got my First at Oxford, after my mother died and Clare went to school in the States. Which brings us to the present moment. Not every man in London has a friend on the force whom he met when a classmate was taken up for helmet-pinching, and one mustn’t bother him with too much talking. Although I am rather criminally lavish in that commodity. We can, however, make our way back to the house.”

“But we haven’t found the ring.”

“Ah, silence, Watson. But haven’t we?” Alaric lifted his hand from where it had been cradling the rose, so the policeman could see the golden band encircling the stem. The latter stared, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“You mean that it’s been here while we’ve been talking?”

“Yes, right where Betty put it. A ring around a rosie, you could say.”

“Really, Alaric. I wonder why you had me come down at all.”

“Oh, but I mightn’t have found it but for you,” (sheer politeness, Dickinson thought,) “as it was you who found it before me. This is the bit of sunshine you pointed out. You give yourself no credit for your wonderful knack for seeing things which are out of place. You have the discipline but you persuade yourself that there is nothing uncanny. But my friends from the Lakes would be proud of your work.”

He straightened, bringing the ring with him cupped in his hand. Together, the two friends began finding their way through the gardens to the house in Audley Square: the tall, lean man in the suit jacket and the stout policeman in mufti.

And the bells would toll merrily the following Sunday, when two very happy young people were married at St George’s Hanover Square, and if the dark and smiling bride had shown you, you would have seen she wore a very old golden ring, for the two friends’ job was done, as was the day, the sun setting smoothly behind the towering buildings of London in a time now gone by–for something which had been lost had been found.

The End

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

1. With grateful acknowledgements to Louis Testa for his editing assistance.