Tomorrow's Crimes ll Moriarty the Patriot

The House of Ravenscroft

The week since her arrival in 1876 had been a crash course in Victorian high society that no amount of Netflix period dramas could have prepared her for. Adelaide - formerly a 32-year-old investigative journalist with a BAFTA, student loan debt, and an unhealthy caffeine addiction - had done what came naturally to her: investigate.

Her body might be wearing corsets and crinolines now, but her mind remained that of a millennial reporter who'd exposed everything from political corruption to human trafficking rings. The servants proved to be an invaluable source of intelligence, their whispered conversations and careful glances painting a picture far more complex than the pristine facade the Blackwoods presented to society.

Martha, her lady's maid, had been particularly revealing - not through what she said, but through what she didn't say. The slight tremor in her hands when helping Adelaide dress for dinner, the way she hesitated before answering questions about family members, her careful repositioning of furniture to maintain clear paths to the door. Adelaide recognized the behaviors of someone who'd learned to navigate around predators.

The housemaids' gossip, carefully collected during Adelaide's strategic wanderings of the manor, filled in crucial gaps. She'd learned to time her movements to coincide with the servants' cleaning schedules, positioning herself near doors left ajar or lingering in corridors where voices carried. The intelligence gathered painted a disturbing picture: Thomas's frequent nightmares after his father's "disciplinary talks," Elizabeth's twins' eerie synchronized movements practiced until their feet bled, the way the footmen took circuitous routes to avoid Richard's usual haunts.

Most tellingly, she'd pieced together that her predecessor - the real Lady Adelaide - had been the perfect Victorian daughter. Where Adelaide the journalist approached life with the tired skepticism of a millennial who'd seen too much corruption, Lady Adelaide had been the embodiment of feminine grace and submission. Her needlework was exquisite, her watercolors pleasingly mediocre, her piano playing just accomplished enough to showcase her discipline without threatening anyone's sensibilities. She never questioned, never challenged, never showed the slightest hint of intellectual curiosity beyond what was deemed appropriate for a young lady of her station.

This perfection heightened Adelaide's anxiety. Every deviation from expected behavior—a too-direct question, a moment of forgotten etiquette, an unconscious eye roll at some particularly absurd social convention—was noted with increasing concern by the family. She had already given them the opportunity to question her in the two weeks since her arrival. Even her posture betrayed her; too many years hunched over laptops had made Victorian deportment a constant struggle. The older maids whispered about how she no longer held her teacup with quite the right degree of delicate grace, how her curtsy had lost its practiced perfection, and how she sometimes forgot to modulate her voice to the properly subdued tones expected of a well-bred young lady.

The pressure on Adelaide was immense, as she'd learned through careful observation and strategic eavesdropping. Her debut season approached - not just any debut, but what was meant to be the social triumph of the year. The real Adelaide had been groomed since birth to be the Diamond of the Season, the perfect representation of aristocratic breeding and feminine virtue. The servants whispered about how much rode on her presentation: potential alliances through marriage, the family's social standing, even the Duke's political ambitions at court.

"Lady Adelaide spent hours practicing her presentation curtsy," one of the younger maids had confided to another while cleaning the morning room, unaware of Adelaide lingering in the connecting corridor. "Every day, until her knees would shake. But she never complained, not once. Not like now..."