The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts

by David Wake

  Once she’d remembered the catch, the sash window came up easily enough. Charlotte stuck her head out and breathed the invigorating, horse manure whiff of fresh air. Clearly, she thought, pipe smoking was not going to be her eccentricity, it would just have to be chocolates and cake.

  Down below, there were three men in top hats at the door arguing with the landlady. She blustered and objected as they forced their way in and moments later a heavy tread sounded on the stairs along with the unmistakable sound of swords clattering.

  It was a long time since she had played ‘hide–and–seek’ here and she realised that she could no longer fit under the sofa nor would the curtains suffice. Indeed, she realised that Uncle Jeremiah must have been particularly blind not to have realised straight away when she’d hid behind them.

  The voices reached the landing: high tones objecting to a lower pitched firmness.

  Maybe they were going up to the second floor.

  The handle rattled.

  “This door’s unlocked,” said a voice that wasn’t Uncle Jeremiah’s.

  Charlotte light footed it across the room and into the bedroom.

  She could hide under the bed – no! It would be the first place they’d look.

  In the wardrobe?

  Footsteps in the study!

  “I must object!” the landlady announced.

  “In writing, Mrs Jacobs, in writing.”

  “But where to?”

  “The Chronological Constabulary, care of Scotland Yard.”

  Trunk!

  Blankets out, flung onto bed, Charlotte in, top down.

  “It’s not on the shelf.”

  “Search everywhere.”

  “I can smell fresh tobacco.”

  “Someone’s been here.”

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  She wasn’t hiding from Uncle – don’t giggle! Don’t! Just don’t!

  “Post… an unpaid bill for glass… galvanic lighting… some funeral.”

  The cheek, Charlotte thought, they’ve opened his letters.

  “This pipe is warm – go and find out if anyone’s been here.”

  “How?”

  “Ask the Jacobs woman.”

  Footsteps went away, but another step sounded in the bedroom. The light in the crack around the trunk lid moved, split and moved again.

  “It’s not by his bed… nor under it.”

  “It was here.”

  “He’s taken it then.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Someone else has been looking for it.”

  “We’d better tell Mrs Frasier.”

  “Rather you than me.”

  “Mrs Frasier isn’t going to be happy.”

  “Is Mrs Frasier ever happy?”

  The footsteps receded.

  The door closed.

  Charlotte lifted the lid a smidge and looked out: they’d gone.

  They’d been looking for ‘it’, they’d not found ‘it’, so ‘it’ wasn’t here, whatever ‘it’ was, and Mrs Frasier, whoever she was, wasn’t going to be happy.

  Back in the drawing room, Charlotte looked around.

  The books had been disturbed on the shelf, the gap was now larger and a Jules Verne lay fallen on the blotter.

  How do you find something, she thought, that you know isn’t here?

  What had the man said: “Kronologic Constab… u… lorry.”

  She fetched down Uncle Jeremiah’s big dictionary: ‘H’… ‘J’… ‘K’… ‘Krona’, ‘Kronecker’… It wasn’t there. Perhaps it was ‘Crone’ like an old woman, which would be an excellent word for Earnestine. Charlotte sniggered as she passed ‘E’ and ‘D’. It wasn’t in ‘C’ neither. Could you have a silent letter in front of a ‘C’ or a ‘K’, she wondered idly flicking the pages. There it was: ‘Chronology – pertaining to, and of, time’.

  “Temporal Peelers,” she whispered aloud.

  So it was true. They had been here looking for Uncle Jeremiah and the mysterious ‘it’. Uncle had packed, quickly as he’d left his trunk and scarf, and then gone on the run. Logically he’d taken ‘it’ with him. ‘It’ would be small, if ‘it’ had been on the shelf. But where would he go? Perhaps Battersea or smudged?

  She checked the letters they’d discarded on the table. It wasn’t wrong, surely, to read them now, because they were open and she’d not opened them herself.

  Smudged turned out to be a Birmingham glass making factory – how dull.

  She could do this.

  The clues were here.

  Holmes always spotted a footprint or a dropped pair of glasses, and deduced a secret room or whatever. No dog had barked, but then Uncle Jeremiah didn’t have a dog.

  He hadn’t opened the letter about Captain Merryweather’s funeral, so he’d not been here for an age, and yet there were only three letters. Perhaps he had arranged to have them forwarded somewhere else. This meant he’d been living somewhere else, but he’d not mentioned anything like that at the theatre, when they’d seen the brass band and that funny sketch about the French Foreign Legion that now seemed so silly in comparison to consulting detective work.

  She had another macaroon.

  Missing book, stupid factories in Battersea and Birmingham, both places that begin with ‘B’, packed quickly, gone… west. He’d left his scarf, so perhaps Africa or India, rather than Canada or the Outer Hebrides. He hadn’t been arrested, because they were looking for him.

  There were no more macaroons.

  Oh, it was impossible.

  Chapter VI

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  Earnestine followed them.

  The Temporal Peeler, Chief Examiner Lombard, had left the way he had arrived, but Earnestine knew how to get to the ‘treasure house’ and thence through a yard and into the street, so, after some undignified running, she was close enough to catch sight of them getting into a four wheeler. As it moved away, fortune smiled on her as a hansom cab came round the corner.

  “Follow that carriage,” she said, climbing up.

  Now they approached Battersea or perhaps further north–east into Vauxhall or Lambeth. She wasn’t sure about this side of the river.

  The driver was holding back as instructed and Earnestine was trying not to bob up to see over the horse’s rump every five minutes.

  The trap door above her opened, and she looked up and back at the driver.

  “They’re stopping, Miss,” he said.

  “Thank you, stop here please.”

  The horse snorted loudly as the driver pulled back on the reins. Earnestine opened the doors in front and stepped down from the two–wheeler.

  “Here,” she said, paying. “Wait.”

  “Right you are, Miss.”

  As she stepped away, she had a sudden panic that she’d paid with the strange King Edward sovereign, but it was still there in her carpet bag, along with the flat iron and the poker. She inwardly cursed herself for not bringing any of the Duelling Machine’s weaponry.

  She was at a factory, she thought, although she wasn’t that familiar with such premises.

  She ran to the entrance, a wrought iron gate between two strong brick pillars with an iron arch between them, and peeked round the corner.

  The dark suited men in their top hats and white glasses were bundling Boothroyd from the carriage and into a goods yard. A smart woman dressed in burgundy appeared and the men snapped to attention. They were talking, too far away for Earnestine to make out any words, and then one of the men pointed at the gate. Earnestine ducked away.

  When she looked back, they were all going inside.

  When the way was clear, Earnestine sprinted across the cobbles and hunkered down in front of the door. Although it had been her plan, now she was near the entrance, she didn’t fancy following them inside. There’d be nowhere to run if she was discovered, so she went around the side of the building – gosh, it went a long way back – keeping low, and craning her neck into each window to check. By the time she’d r
eached the third, she saw them – just.

  She searched round for something to stand on and found a barrel covered in a black powdery substance that left a soot mark on her fingers. She tilted it on its rim to semi–roll it up against the wall. When she clambered on top, she could just see through the dirty window.

  At the end of a long room, the Temporal Peelers and that woman in the long evening dress had gathered on a platform with the Peelers holding the forlorn and dejected form of Boothroyd between them.

  They stood in formation, holding their sword scabbards flat against them, almost as if they were posing for a daguerreotype.

  All of a sudden, and in unison, they checked their pocket watches: it was a bizarre, almost choreographed, action.

  A noise, a galvanic fizzing or a bagpipe drone with a rising tone, ululated, and a light pulsed brightly within.

  And then… and then…

  They vanished: right before her eyes, the figures faded away to nothing.

  The light returned to normal.

  She blinked – once, twice – but it didn’t bring them back. They had definitely disappeared.

  The platform was empty.

  She’d had a clear view. The light hadn’t dazzled her, she’d blinked, but not closed her eyes, and they’d not stepped off or gone out the back way.

  They’d just evaporated.

  She’d seen stage magicians dematerialise people in the theatre, but that had always been inside a closed box.

  These had simply gone, right in front of her eyes.

  So it was true.

  Men from the future had come and gone.

  What would that herald for her time?

  And what to do about it?

  When Earnestine arrived back at 12b Zebediah Row, she had a plan. She went straight upstairs and dug out her medium kit bag. The stout canvas contained a variety of useful items: penknife, compass, flashlight, spare batteries, matches, tinder, sewing kit, spare button, handkerchief, whistle, map of London, pencil and notebook, water bottle, dark lantern, extra socks, a bandage, two packs of Kendal mint cake and a clothes peg. She’d take her lucky umbrella too, and money.

  The door opened downstairs.

  For a moment Earnestine feared that it was the Temporal Peelers come to arrest her and she grabbed her umbrella to defend herself, but it was just silly Charlotte. Earnestine could see that the irresponsible child had been out rough and tumbling, but there was no time to chide her properly now.

  “Charlotte! Get cleaned up and packed this instant.”

  “Ness, I–”

  “This instant!”

  Money would be useful and that was all in the large kit.

  She lifted the trunk out, opened it and hefted out all the spare clothing. Under the false bottom was a wad of big white paper notes, a bag of sovereigns and a smaller purse of silver and bronze. She felt disorganised as she really should have predicted this sort of eventuality and prepared a medium–large adventure… no, not adventure… medium–large emergency kit. She divided the money into evenly distributed portions, one for the kit bag, one for her jacket and one for the cunning pocket that she’d sewn onto the inside of her winter skirt.

  Charlotte still hadn’t packed!

  “Charlotte, pack – now!”

  “Ness.”

  “Now!”

  Earnestine found the carpet bag and loaded it with the medium kit bag, a knobkerrie from the Zulu lands and a police truncheon. Father’s old belts would hold it all together and she could use the strap from the large kit to carry it over a shoulder. Unfortunately, it would give it a bohemian appearance, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “Lottie, for goodness sake! Pack.”

  Earnestine, having had to check upon the youngster three times, took matters into her own hands, stuffed Charlotte’s leather luggage bag with clothes pulled from her drawers at random and then bundled it all, including Charlotte herself, down to the front door.

  “This is five pounds,” said Earnestine.

  “Oh, goodness, oh, oh…”

  “Spend it only in an emergency.”

  “Ooh, Ness…”

  “Now, hail a cab and go to Uncle Jeremiah’s,” Earnestine instructed. “Stay there until I say it’s safe, and don’t go anywhere else.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can, stop being silly.”

  “Uncle Jeremiah’s not there.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s on the run from Temporal Peelers.”

  Earnestine blanched. All her plans fell away to be replaced instantly by others, but she felt one step behind and awfully in the dark.

  “How do you know this?” she asked.

  “I went round to his rooms and he hasn’t been seen for three weeks.”

  “Why weren’t you at school?”

  “And I discovered that he’s on the run from Temporal Peelers. They turned up – I hid, wasn’t that clever? And they couldn’t find him, so I looked for clues.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “Oh Ness, it’s a horrid place. We’ve far more important matters to worry about,” said Charlotte, dismissing this minor trifle. “The adventure is afoot!”

  Earnestine was appalled: “Adventure?”

  “You like adventures.”

  “I do not.”

  “What’s all this then?” Charlotte pointed at Earnestine’s open carpet bag complete with the medium kit, knobkerrie and umbrella. She added the flat iron.

  “It’s for emergencies.”

  “Where’s your flashlight?”

  “It’s in the medium adv– I mean, emergen–”

  “Ah ha!”

  “Well, you’ll just have to go with Georgina to the…” Earnestine gritted her teeth, “…seaside.”

  “Oh, Ness, it’ll be a holiday.”

  “No, it won’t. I have to… do whatever it is that needs doing and you have to keep out of trouble. My employer, Mister Boothroyd, was arrested, Uncle Jeremiah’s disappeared–”

  “An MP has been arrested.”

  “As have many others, so Georgina and…” Earnestine was suddenly conscious of another disappearance: “Where’s Georgina?”

  Mrs Arthur Merryweather

  Georgina wished fervently that she was somewhere else, but she was so ravenous that the dining room was the place she needed to be. Unfortunately, Mrs Falcone was holding court and her tale of Red Indian Medicine in the Americas endlessly delayed the serving of the food. Apparently, the savages caught dreams in large nets. It conjured up an image of red men, dressed as running buffalo, leaping around like so many butterfly–collecting clergymen.

  During all this, Georgina could see the hot pots steaming on the side, gradually cooling and then, as the prattle turned to peace pipes, going cold. She could taste the flavours in the still air such was her anticipation. It was torture.

  “We shall have a séance on Friday,” Mrs Falcone announced. “For we cannot possibly do so without the Reverend Gabriel Milton. He is such an open minded individual when it comes to the spirit world.”

  Mrs Falcone was seated at the head of the table. This place should have been for her Arthur, Georgina was sure, but she wasn’t acquainted with the seating arrangements now. The problem was that this irritating woman, who seemed to receive most of her information from great chieftains disguised as eagles, was acting as if she owned the place. Georgina didn’t want Magdalene Chase herself, but she didn’t want this Mrs Falcone to have it either. What was she doing here? What was her position? What was a polite way to ask?

  “Perhaps we could discuss this over dinner?” Georgina suggested.

  “We are.”

  “Over the actual repast.”

  “I say, what a splendid idea,” agreed Colonel Fitzwilliam, leaning odiously towards her. “Capital.”

  “My Millicent here! She has an opinion on that, don’t you, dear?”

  “Perhaps food, Mama… or not,” said Millicent, her eyes dartin
g about as if she were the rabbit about to be caught and cooked in a pot.

  “Mrs Jago, if you would be so kind,” Georgina said.

  Mrs Jago glared from the dark corner where she stood in attendance.

  “The Colonel,” Georgina said.

  “Ladies first, my dear.”

  “So kind, Colonel.”

  Caught in the pincer movement, Mrs Jago had no choice: “Yes, Miss.”

  Georgina bit her tongue. Once, just this once, she’d let that pass – anything to have something on her plate.

  Mrs Jago served Mrs Falcone, then at an even more glacial pace, Miss Millicent, before tapping the spoons on the pots and placing them on the sideboard.

  Georgina clattered her cutlery.

  “Miss Dee… my dear,” the Colonel said.

  Mrs Jago found the spoons again and served Georgina and the Colonel. It was stew, or something, apparently lamb, with vegetables.

  The wine was next to Mrs Falcone, the jug of water by Georgina. The Colonel had brought in a whiskey.

  “The Reverend Gabriel Milton once communed with William Shakespeare’s brother, did you know?”

  Georgina swallowed a spoonful; bliss: “No, I did not.”

  “Then you have a lot to learn, Miss.”

  Georgina could not say ‘Ma’am’ with her mouth full.

  “We will conjure up the spirits and learn much from them. I always do. They have much to tell us.”

  Georgina could feel her strength returning: “Will we bring forth the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come?” she asked.

  She and her sisters had once played the characters from Charles Dickens’ story at a fancy dress party: Earnestine had been the past, Georgina the present and Charlotte had been the ghost of the future. Charlotte had disappeared, she remembered, leaving Earnestine and Georgina as two bereft figures.

  “The doubters of youth,” Mrs Falcone said, condescendingly. “You may mock, but the spirits will have their retribution.”

  At that moment, the wind – it was the wind – rattled the windows and howled around the building and wailed down the chimney.

  Georgina, who relished reading books on the chemical interactions of daguerreotype printing, found the idea of spirits both ludicrous and deeply disturbing. They were all utterly serious and perhaps, in this God forsaken place, the departed really did communicate from the other side, and science and rationality only worked as far as the reach of the railways.