Macallister Fogg 3: The Hetrodythermaline Highwayman

by Mark Hodder

  Fogg looked at her and smiled. “How is our supply of coffee?”

  “Healthy, on account of the fact that you normally drink tea in such vast quantities. You’re aware they serve neither to patients in Bedlam?”

  “Be a dear and brew a pot, would you? I fear I shall be up all night working on this confounded whatever-it-is!”

  The following morning, at nine o’clock, Emma Boswell descended the stairs, entered the room she’d decided to call Fogg’s Chaos, and was assaulted by a rank odour reminiscent of mouldering cheese stirred into decaying fruit.

  She staggered and clutched at the door for support. The contents of her stomach wriggled up into her throat. She fought gallantly to force them down again.

  Fogg, whose wide moustache had become so unruly that its left side pointed northeast and its right southwest, regarded her with a wild light in his eyes.

  “Nearly there!” he cried out. “It’s extraordinary. I feel positive that I’m employing techniques never used before, but how do I know ‘em, hey? How do I know ‘em?”

  Emma raised a finger to her temple, waggled it in a circle, and said, in a singsong voice, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

  “Four hours, Mrs Boswell! Four more hours, then the tincture will be ready!”

  “I shall use that time gainfully, sir,” she informed him, “in seeking new employment!”

  She beat a hasty retreat.

  At one o’clock, she was relaxing in the consulting room, reading Thackery’s Vanity Fair, when, with a sound like a cork being pulled from a bottle, the lid popped off a brass pipe rising from the floor in a corner near the window. The pipe whistled airily, then Macallister Fogg’s voice came through it, sounding loud but hollow and ghostly. “I say! I say! Can you hear me, Mrs Boswell? Hallo? Hallo? Come across at once, please! I said, come across at once, please! Can you hear me? Hallo?”

  She rolled her eyes, lay her book aside, stood, crossed to the pipe, leaned over it, and said, “I can hear you quite clearly, as always, sir, through the door as well as through this unwarranted pipe. I’ll be there at once.”

  “By golly! There’s no need to shout, young lady! I said, there’s no need to shout! Hallo? Hallo?”

  She crossed the hallway and joined the detective, thankful to see the window wide open, but a little dismayed at the amount of snow that was blowing in.

  “Come sit by the fire!” Fogg commanded.

  She obliged.

  He held up a small vial. “Here it is!”

  “Mr Fogg, I still don't understand what it is. You say this potion will enable us to converse with one of your ancestors? I say: how? And also: how do you know? And, perhaps most importantly: where did the inspiration for it come from?”

  “To which I reply, Mrs Boswell: I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know!”

  “It’s my opinion, sir, that you had a rather vivid dream when you fell asleep in your chair yesterday. To brew Lord-knows-what based on that dream, and to propose drinking it, is, I insist, utter folly!”

  “Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you, madam, but with every fibre of my being I’m convinced that this will achieve what I have proposed. I therefore ask you to take up your notebook, for it falls to you to interrogate whichever of my ancestors is channelled through me after I consume the tincture.”

  “Channelled? Ah! I see! You expect to be transformed into a medium. You think the liquid will connect you to the Afterlife?”

  “Perhaps. Notebook, Mrs B! Notebook!”

  Emma got up, crossed to her desk, retrieved her notebook and pen, and returned to her chair. She looked at Fogg and saw him licking his lips. The vial was empty.

  “I was uncertain what quantity to consume, so I swallowed it all.”

  “Lunatic!”

  “Scientist.”

  “Amateur!”

  “Granted. Do I seem any different?”

  “No. You are still quite obviously your demented self. Do you feel any different?”

  “No.”

  They waited. Fifteen minutes passed. Nothing happened.

  Emma Boswell shivered. “I should close the window. The stench has cleared and there’s snow piling up on the floor.”

  “Stay there. I’ll do it.”

  Fogg stood, paced over to the bay, and slid down the sash on the right-hand side. He looked out at Baker Street and watched the morning traffic passing by; the horse-drawn carts, hansoms and phaetons, the workmen and maids and dollymops and hawkers.

  He turned to face his secretary, and asked, “What year is this?”

  III

  “Year, Mr Fogg? Why, 1857, of—of—of course.”

  Emma Boswell rose from her chair and took three steps back, increasing the distance between herself and her employer, for a single glance had convinced her that he was no longer Macallister Fogg. His face had altered dreadfully: the eyebrows were now unevenly arched; the eyes blazed with a feral light; the cheeks had somehow become gaunt; and the mouth was curled into a horrible sneer.

  Whoever he was, he twisted back to the window, yanked the net curtain aside, and examined his reflection.

  “What has happened to me, girl?” he snarled.

  “You—you have been summoned into the body of one of your descendants. May I inquire as to your identity?”

  He faced her again, frowning, his lips tight against his teeth.

  “Identity? I am Doctor Cyrus Fogg. A victim of witchcraft, am I?”

  “Not at all, sir. The process is scientific.”

  Cyrus paced forward. Emma backed away again.

  “And this person I inhabit?” he demanded, slapping his chest. “Who is he?”

  “Mr Macallister Edwin Fogg. He is your great great grandson. A detective by trade.”

  “What is a detective?”

  “An investigator, sir. A man who examines the evidence left after a crime has been committed in order to identify the perpetrator and bring him or her to justice.”

  Cyrus looked surprised, then put back his head and loosed a bellow of laughter. “A sheriff! Descended from me! Hah!”

  “Mr—Mr Fogg resurrected you to—to ask you a question,” Emma stammered. She moved closer to the fireplace and surreptitiously hovered her hand over a brass poker.

  “Did he now? And what question might that be?”

  “History records that you poisoned your brother, the Reverend Leonard Fogg. My employer is curious as to your motivation for that deed.”

  A look of pure rage darkened the visitor’s face.

  “I needed no motivation. My damned father saw to that.” Cyrus seemed to make a conscious effort to control himself, took a deep breath, then proceeded to wander around the room, idly examining the things in it. “Doctor Bartholomew Fogg was either a genius or a madman, I have yet to decide which. He was a teacher of chemistry at Oxford University, and, according to my mother, was of a particularly dull and uninspired disposition until, quite out of the blue, he awoke from a nap one day with his head overflowing with strange ideas. Foremost among these was the conception that a person’s character is created through chemical processes in the body, and that an element of these processes somehow dictates the balance of good and evil in an individual.”

  Cyrus Fogg took a heavy book from a shelf and examined its spine.

  “To demonstrate this, my father manipulated the pregnancy of his wife, causing her to carry twins, one of whom would be the epitome of goodness, the other of wickedness. And I, my dear—” He turned to face Emma Boswell and smiled cruelly, “—am the latter.”

  Emma bent, clutched the end of the poker, and swept it up. She brandished it from side to side. “I’ll have none of your nonsense in this house, sir!”

  Cyrus shrugged. “As you say.”

  “Then pray continue with your explanation, but do not approach me.”

  With a snort of contempt, the man from the past put the book back on the shelf and wandered over to the bench where Macallister Fogg had laid out his chemical apparatus
. He examined a hole in the work surface—it was about six inches in diameter—and, looking through it, noticed a same shaped hole in the floor, obviously the consequence of an experiment gone wrong. Idly, he picked up a pencil and dropped it in.

  “As children, Leonard and I were entirely opposed in personality. He was a happy, friendly and generous child, while I was morose, withdrawn, and selfish. When we reached adulthood, he trained as a clergyman because he wanted to do good. I trained as a doctor of chemistry, like my father. The reason for that choice? Simply this: I did not want to be what I was, and, having learned what my father had done, I intended to find a way to correct the imbalance in my temperament, to shine some light upon the darkness within. I was soon disappointed. No one knew how Bartholomew Fogg had intervened in the natural processes of conception and birth. Even he didn’t know, for the knowledge left him as mysteriously as it had arrived.”

  He moved to the second workbench, which was strewn with tools and pieces of machinery. He picked up a small crankshaft.

  “But I persevered, and finally created a drug that I thought might work. I slipped it into my brother’s drink without him knowing and awaited the results, expecting that his unbearable goodness would become tainted with some of my evil. Instead, the sanctimonious sod dropped dead. That—” He paused, then asked, “Incidentally, what’s your name, girl?”

  “Mrs Emma Boswell.”

  “That—Mrs Emma Boswell—was the first murder I committed, and, though it was accidental, it changed everything, for I positively enjoyed it! Yes! I enjoyed it! I revelled in it! In killing my twin brother, I liberated myself! And thus began my career of crime, which, currently, has me holed up in Epping Forest and following in the footsteps of Dick Turpin!”

  Emma uttered a small exclamation and said, “What year is it? For you, I mean.”

  “It has just turned 1750.”

  “I see. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Doctor Fogg, but it’s the year your career comes to an end—the year they hang you. And that, sir, is the inevitable consequence of your unbridled evil.”

  Cyrus Fogg smirked. “All well and good, my girl, but for one thing.”

  “And what is that?”

  “It is not 1750, is it? It’s 1857!”

  He suddenly jerked his hand back and hurled the crankshaft at her. It caught her on the side of the head. She crumpled to the floor.

  IV

  HIGHWAY ROBBERY!

  FAMOUS NECKLACE STOLEN!

  At approximately five o’clock last Tuesday, February 20th, Lady Elizabeth Edmonton and her party, comprised of four men and four women, were travelling by Landau en route to Bexley, where they were to attend a dinner at Colonel Henry Summervale’s home. As befits such an occasion, the guests were in their best finery, which included the celebrated Brundleweed Diamond Necklace, worn by Lady Edmonton herself. The necklace is currently valued at around £130,000.

  The Landau was proceeding along Shooter’s Hill and had just come alongside Eltham Common when, from the trees, a mounted and masked individual emerged and blocked the vehicle’s route. Upon being threatened by a brace of pistols, the driver brought the Landau to a halt, and was greeted with the traditional cry of “Stand and deliver! Your money or your life!” The passengers were then forced to disembark and were divested of their jewellery, furs, purses, and assorted personal possessions.

  A brimmed hat and a scarf worn across the lower part of his face concealed the highwayman’s features. His horse, which was black in colouring, bore a distinctive white patch on its forehead, which matches that of an animal stolen, along with saddlery and tack, from the Neville Stables in Blackheath two days previously.

  This is the first highway robbery to have been committed since 1831, the crime having gone into rapid decline after the establishment of the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, and due to the proliferation of toll roads around the capital.

  “Aside from your fellow passengers, Lady Edmonton, did anyone know that you intended to wear the Brundleweed Necklace to Colonel Summervale’s dinner party?”

  Emma Boswell was sitting in a parlour in Edmonton House, Greenwich, with—she was certain—the victim of Doctor Cyrus Fogg’s first reported crime.

  Two weeks had passed since her employer had transformed into his fiendish ancestor and knocked her unconscious. She’d recovered to find the house ransacked. Many of the detective’s clothes had gone, as had his two Beaumont-Adams revolvers, his chemistry equipment, and what little money there’d been on the premises.

  Emma had waited, hoping that, once the drug wore off, Macallister Fogg would return.

  Every day, she’d scoured the newspapers, expecting to learn that a madman had been apprehended and incarcerated, or, heaven forbid, that a body matching Fogg’s description had been discovered.

  She read nothing whatever that might relate to him.

  Then came the highway robbery.

  Lady Edmonton, resplendent in multiple bell-shaped skirts, straining corsets, and an absurdly frilly blouse, dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Her chins wobbled as she replied, in a high and quavering voice, “I hosted a little soiree here the Saturday before. That’s when I made the decision to wear the necklace to the Colonel’s. But I didn’t mention it then, or subsequently, to anyone. At least, that’s what I told the police.”

  “You mean you’ve reconsidered?”

  “It’s been preying on my mind. I don’t remember clearly, but—but I suspect that it—it might have been one of my guests, Doctor Trace, who actually suggested it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He accompanied Mademoiselle Olivia Orsini, the poor dear. He’s treating her—” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “—for her addiction.”

  “Addiction? To what?”

  “Opium, my dear.”

  “And you hadn’t met the doctor before?”

  “Not at all. He’s fresh on the scene. Very nice, though. Polite. Attentive.”

  “And in appearance?”

  “Burly and muscular but rather too short to be attractive. Extravagant mustachios.”

  “Blue eyes?”

  “Oh yes, wonderfully.”

  “Thank you, Lady Edmonton. May I ask one last thing? Would you mind supplying me with Mademoiselle Orsini’s address?”

  A few minutes later, Emma left Edmonton House, climbed into Macallister Fogg’s autowagon, and went chugging away along the New Cross Road. Thankfully, the snow had cleared a couple of days previously, but a cold and misty rain was swirling about through the air, so she pulled her hat low, wiped the lenses of her driving goggles, wrapped a woollen scarf around her face, and buttoned up her overcoat.

  Her passage through New Cross caused the usual rumpus; horses shied away from the steaming vehicle, pedestrians shouted and cheered or shook their fists in the air; and children and dogs chased behind. The same occurred when she entered the Old Kent Road and drove through Hatcham and Peckham New Town, but she steadfastly refused to be distracted, and while one half of her mind concentrated on controlling the unruly vehicle, the other pondered the problem at hand: the possible location of Doctor Trace, who, she was certain, was actually Doctor Cyrus Fogg.

  How thoroughly, she wondered, had the villain familiarised himself with 1857 in the past fortnight? Enough to inveigle his way into the house of a well-to-do opium addict, obviously, but did he realise that newspapers operated at a much faster pace than those of his own time?

  “Foolish girl! Of course he realises!” Emma murmured to herself. “Newspapers are sure to be his window into what, for him, is the world of the future. Which means he probably knows his highway robbery has been reported. I doubt, then, that he’ll still be at Mademoiselle Orsini’s!”

  Eventually reaching Bermondsey New Road, she steered onto it and made her way to Bermondsey Square, where she stopped close to a barrow man who was noisily selling hot chestnuts.

  “Will you keep an eye on my carriage?” she asked him. “There’s a shilling in it for yo
u.”

  He saluted and replied: “Yus, I’ll do that, fer sure, miss. But tain’t gonna ’splode, is it?”

  “No, sir. The ticking and groaning is merely the furnace expanding and contracting as the heat fluctuates.”

  “Beggin’ yer pardin?”

  “I said, no, it’s perfectly safe.”

  She strode along the pavement until she came to no. 3—a medium-sized Georgian house set back in its own gardens—and entered through the gate. At the front door, she yanked the bell pull and heard a jangle from within. Half a minute later, the door was opened by a tall and stooped old woman.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Good afternoon. I am Mrs Emma Boswell. I’m here to see Mademoiselle Orsini.”

  “The lady of the house is indisposed, ma’am. She can’t see anyone.”

  Emma took a chance. “I’m fully cognisant of her condition. Doctor Trace sent me. I’m to examine her and report back to him.”

  The old woman swallowed the lie with a cry of relief. “Oh, thank goodness! I was concerned that whatever business took him from us had led him to abandon my mistress! Please, come in! I’m Mrs Jackyl, the housekeeper.”

  She stepped aside to allow Emma entry then led her up the shadowy, ill-lit stairs, talking volubly the whole time.

  “I suppose I should be more trusting, ma’am, and I apologise for thinking the worst, but I was never well acquainted with the doctor in the short time he was with us. Have you been long in his employ?”

  “No. He hired me from an agency just this morning. How is your mistress?”

  “Not at all good, ma’am. That’s why I’m so thankful Doctor Trace saw fit to send you. She’s been terribly listless since visiting Lady Edmonton last weekend.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, walked along a short hallway, and stopped at a door.

  The housekeeper said, “Please wait here a moment while I announce you,” and went into the room. Moments later, she reappeared, pale-faced and wringing her hands. “Thank heavens you’ve come! She’s worse than ever! Can you not bring Doctor Trace here at once?”