A voice called out, ‘Come on in!’ My voice. No, not my voice. I hadn’t spoken.
A door opened. ‘Breakfast, madam.’ A man in a suit stood there. Servant? Steward?
‘Oh thank the good lord above. I’m hungrier than a dozen horses.’ I was looking down. A pair of legs swung out of the lower bunk, sheathed in scarlet satin just like mine were. A head of red-gold curls poked out too, then a woman stood up to take the tray from the steward.
She turned to look at me. ‘Toast?’ said Melody Malone.
We both perched on the bottom bunk and ate toast. Every time I raised my hand to take a bite, she did too. It was disconcerting, perhaps more so because it wasn’t like looking in a mirror as we were both right-handed.
I knew now where I was. I was on a flying boat, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
Well, that’s where I appeared to be. Where I actually was, was inside my own book, The Ruby’s Curse.
But, you’re perhaps thinking, you talked to Melody Malone via a cat in the real world so this isn’t very different.
Yes it is! Because that was merely weird, whereas this is impossible.
I could not physically be in an actual book, of course. So where was this? Some strange little pocket universe? An offshoot of the Land of Fiction? That was my best guess. How I was here was a mystery, but a more pressing question was:
‘Why am I here?’ I said – to myself, but out loud.
‘Cos I asked you, stupid!’ She shrugged. ‘Kinda weird I didn’t think of asking you before. My sister being the bigshot bone-digger and all – shoulda had you come in on this ages ago. You just –’ she looked a bit puzzled – ‘just kinda slipped my mind for a minute.’
‘Well, I’m here now,’ I said, deciding I’d best not unravel the entire causal nexus. If I went all-out to convince her that I wasn’t her sister, who knew what might happen?
I just wished I hadn’t given her that ridiculous cod gangster accent. It had seemed a good idea at the time.
‘Do you remember being in my world?’ I asked her.
She frowned, raising a silver cloche to reveal a dish of kippers below. ‘What sorta idiot orders fish for breakfast? What on earth was I thinking?’ she said, picking up one of the flat fish and beginning to gnaw on it, before seeming to realise what she was doing and putting it down again. ‘Ugh. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me this morning.’
I guessed that meant she didn’t remember – consciously, at least.
‘Tell me who else is here,’ I said.
‘Well, there’s Harry, of course. I told you about him. Real hunk of beef, he is. Mm-mm.’ She shot a look at me. ‘Got a bit happy when he heard I had a twin, Harry did.’
Oh, I don’t think so, Harry. ‘Who else?’ I said.
‘Calvin Cuttling. You heard of him? Rich as Rockefeller, they say. Got his secretary with him, chick called Jones. Looks like someone’s wafting kippers under her nose the whole time and she can’t bear the stink.’ Melody waved a kipper herself to demonstrate, taking a couple of bites out of it before catching herself and putting it down on the plate again. ‘Then there’s the Peterson-Lee dame.’
I frowned. Mrs Peterson-Lee? Had she been in on the flying boat denouement in my plan? I hadn’t got that far before I’d had to flee Stormcage. Where had I left her? Released by the cops for lack of evidence? But then Ventrian had changed things a bit. I remember he’d had the ruby disappear again, and then …
And then …?
‘Melody, what are you doing?’
She looked down and seemed surprised to see she’d poured the entire jug of cream into her saucer. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She looked as puzzled as I did. ‘I was doing it for … Hey, I don’t have a cat, do I?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ I said – but I realised I wasn’t sure. I was getting a headache. I never get headaches. Maybe it was the altitude. I guess it was affecting my sister too; I’d never seen her do weird things like that before, and (obviously) I’d known her her whole life.
‘Sorry. You want coffee?’
‘I’ll do it.’ I picked up the coffeepot and filled my cup.
Melody put her head down and started to lap at her saucer. Then her head shot up, milk dripping off her chin, and she grimaced. She took out a handkerchief and wiped her mouth and chin. Neither of us said anything.
I pushed my cup away. I wasn’t in the mood for black coffee, and the milk was a bit too … licked for me.
‘Is that everyone?’ I asked, trying to ignore the elephant in the room of my sister’s table manners. I would keep blaming the altitude.
‘Well, Phil’s here, of course. Like I’d go anywhere without the Kid!’
Phil. Of course, Phil ‘the Kid’, my sister’s invaluable protégé slash dogsbody. I used to tease her about him, the little puppy dog that followed her everywhere and –
I shook my head, trying to clear it. No. I didn’t know Phil. I hadn’t even created Phil. I’d never teased Melody about him; I’d never even interacted with Melody pre-cat. I was River Song, and I was real. I had to remember that. I’d play along with this scenario, yes, but I mustn’t become part of it.
‘Let’s get dressed, then we’ll go and see everyone,’ said Melody.
There was a wardrobe, hung with two sets of identical clothes. I splashed my face with cold water at the washstand, then changed into a navy-blue buttoned dress with sailor collar. I wasn’t that surprised when I looked over to the other side of the room and saw Melody buttoning up exactly the same dress.
We left our cabin together and went to the lounge. As a flying boat, the craft was more like a cruise ship than an aeroplane and the lounge had comfortable armchairs in two rows, one either side of the room, facing each other.
Harry looked up and smiled when he saw me. Then he looked from me to Melody, and his eyes widened – as did his grin. He stood and gave us both a quick bow. ‘Now I get it! I know why you smuggled your sister on board last night!’ he said to me. ‘You realised there’s no way I could sleep knowing there were two such dolls nearby!’
I smiled back, although I was somewhat disappointed in Harry. He was superficially good-looking, as per the physical description in the book, but rather than being charming he actually came across as slightly smarmy. All surface. I obviously wasn’t as good at creating characters as I’d thought. But I indicated my double and said, ‘I think you’re talking to Melody.’
‘Let me introduce you to everyone,’ Melody said, taking my arm and leading me away from the leering Harry. ‘My sister, River. This is Mr Cuttling – Miss Jones – Mrs Peterson-Lee.’
I murmured all my ‘pleased-to-meet-you’s and sat down in an armchair facing Miss Jones. Melody sat next to me, facing Harry. Cuttling was reading a newspaper which had headlines including ‘FRANCE ENDS PUBLIC EXECUTIONS’ and ‘CHURCHILL TO HITLER: IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE COURSE’. Always handy to have a newspaper to subtly set the historical context.
‘If you’re twins – why do you have different accents?’ Mrs Peterson-Lee (of Esher) asked me. Oh, good question.
‘Split up at birth,’ Melody said. ‘I went to New York with Dad –’
‘– and I was found in a handbag at London Waterloo,’ I completed. ‘We tracked each other down later on.’
Well, that invention did at least give us all something to talk about. Not that I felt like talking. I was getting another headache. Oh, you’d have got one too if you had to listen to these boring people. They were very dull, falling immediately into silence as soon as Melody or I turned our attention elsewhere. I still didn’t understand what my sister saw in Harry. She usually had pretty good taste in men.
No no no.
Melody Malone is not my sister. She is my character.
So is Harry.
So are all of them. They stop talking when they’re not part of the plot.
I mustn’t forget who I am: I am River Song, I am real!
A woman’s scream rent the air, followed by a sho
ut of ‘Miss Malone!’ in a boy’s voice.
Melody and I jumped up and ran towards the noise, the others slightly behind us.
‘In here!’ The shout had come from a youth who wore a jacket and trousers that were slightly too big for him and a newsboy cap on what looked like a shaved head. He was indicating the cabin Melody and I had left not that long before.
‘Phil! What is it?’ Melody demanded.
The youth stepped back to let us see for ourselves.
A maid in cap and apron was kneeling on the floor beside the steward who’d brought us breakfast. He was lying there, his mouth a rictus, foam spewing down his chin. It was clear he was dead and had died quickly and very probably painfully. Coffee spread out around him from a broken cup.
Both Mrs Peterson-Lee and Miss Jones looked like they were going to faint. Cuttling looked more annoyed than anything.
I picked up the coffeepot, still half full, and sniffed. ‘Poison,’ I said. I looked at Melody. ‘Lucky you fancied milk this morning. This poor man must have had some of what we left.’
‘You should have a food taster, Miss Malone,’ said Phil. ‘My mother and father both had one, and thought them invaluable.’
Funny household the kid must have grown up in, I thought, but all I said was, ‘Why would someone want one of us dead? And is it one of us – or both of us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Melody replied.
Harry and Cuttling lifted the body onto the lower bunk and covered it with a sheet. ‘You’d better move to another cabin,’ Harry told us. ‘Hey, point us in the direction of an empty room,’ he said to the maid, who had managed to stand up but was still hyperventilating.
‘I … I don’t think there are any more,’ she gasped.
Harry raised an eyebrow and looked at Melody and me. ‘Guess you’d better move into mine,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’
Miss Jones gave an indignant squeak. Peterson-Lee looked outraged.
‘I would move in with Cuttling, of course,’ said Harry, all butter wouldn’t melt.
‘Oh, we’ll worry about all that later,’ said Melody. ‘I think I could do with a drink. Not coffee,’ she added.
Mrs Peterson-Lee went to lie down, to recover from the shock, but the rest of us trooped back to the lounge area, and another maid brought us an (unopened) bottle of brandy. I refused a glass. I had no idea if fictional alcohol could dull one’s faculties but why risk it? Especially as the shock seemed to have brought me back to my senses; I was thinking more clearly now – and I needed to stay that way. This world was clearly able to exert some sort of control over me, pulling me into its narrative. I couldn’t afford to lose myself like that again.
Ventrian had sent me here, I was certain of that. All his strange and cautious clues had led to this. And I guessed the tortuous route wasn’t merely down to a tortured soul. This was his last, best and only shot at ridding creation of the Device for good, if the route to it was too obvious, the Device would know. It would grasp what was happening and seek to stop events. So now, having come so far along this harrowing route, I was more determined than ever to quite literally finish the tale. Ventrian’s purpose had become my all-consuming goal: to find and destroy the Device; or rather, its avatar, the Eye of Horus.
So what was supposed to happen now?
Beware the Ides – now Caesar’s gone
The Eye’s the only Rubicon.
The rhyme had got me this far, but I had a feeling there was more meaning I needed to squeeze out of it.fn1
Were there further clues here, inside the book? Would I find instructions written on a wall somewhere? Did I need to go up to, say, Mrs Peterson-Lee and whisper something like, ‘The blue duck flies west for the winter,’ and she’d reach into her handbag and pass over a sheaf of secret documents?
No. None of that really fitted. I had to assume that if I were in a ‘book’, what I had to do was connected with the book in some way. We were, after all, close to the end of the story, which was presumably significant. What had happened in Ventrian’s final few chapters?
I … couldn’t remember.
But I’d read them. I’d definitely read them. I couldn’t remember the detail, but I could remember my own sensations. Ventrian had changed my ending – my intended ending, I should say – and I remembered feeling slightly superior that he hadn’t figured out the clues I’d laid, then wondered if his solution was actually better than mine. Perhaps I should have made the murderer …
Hold on – who had he made the murderer?
My brain couldn’t go there. Not exactly as though there was a barrier in my mind – more that, well, that the information just wasn’t there to access.
Try again. All the characters were on the flying boat, heading to Egypt, and then …
Nothing.
I reached out and poured myself a brandy, and topped up Melody’s glass too. I could do with a drink, after –
Stop! I was getting pulled back into the fiction. I pushed my glass away.
Try as hard as I could, I could not recall a single detail past this point in the narrative.
Because it hadn’t happened yet? Perhaps that was it.
No one had said a word while I was thinking. They weren’t frozen statues, they sipped drinks, they smiled occasionally, the women tidied their hair, the men smoothed their moustaches. But they were waiting for something. They were waiting for the plot to move on.
Perhaps that was the solution.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked Melody.
‘Seriously?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘To find Wallace’s murderer and get back the ruby.’
‘So just another day at the office, then.’ But that had told me what I was working towards. I had to move on with the plot, but no one said which plot. Maybe my original ending was still valid! When I’d worked out the story, I’d made the murderer –
The murderer had been –
Melody had discovered the murderer was –
No. I couldn’t remember my solution either. Both Ventrian’s ending and mine had gone.
But there was no need to panic. If my mind couldn’t go forward, it would have to look backwards and solve the mystery that way. I’d placed plenty of clues along the way …
Which had also vanished from my brain.
I still felt sure I was right: the reason I was here would be revealed at the story’s end. But I couldn’t cheat. I couldn’t turn to the last page. I couldn’t skip a chapter. I had to experience it, the same as any other character.
I had to hold my nose and dive in. I would be a character. Would I retain some awareness of my own reality? All I could do is hope.
‘Melody,’ I said. ‘I need you to tell me everything. Every single that’s happened to you – from page one onwards.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, AD 1939
Me and my sister. We get along – more or less. Trouble is, we’re too much alike. Not just on the outside, either. There’s one thing that’s always got both of us going, ever since we were toddlers trying to figure out where Mom and Pop had hidden the Christmas presents, and that’s a mystery. As we grew up, we embraced it in different ways. I went the Private Eye route. I’d considered applying to Pinkerton’s; they’re ahead of their time, there, they’ve had a Female Detective Department for quite a few years now. But I like my independence. Don’t say I’ve not come close to regretting it a few times – you can’t eat independence and it don’t pay the rent either – but in the main it’s been good.
River, she went in another direction. Archaeology, that’s her thing. I might have become an Inc. but she’s got a lot more letters after her name. ‘Professor Song’ is how she gets introduced these days (yeah, we have different surnames. I adopted a new one for professional reasons. Bad enough being a female PI, can you imagine what it’s like when you’re called Melody Song on top of that? Might as well be called Ms Tuney McTuneface). Yeah, I’m proud of her, and I thin
k it’s mutual, but we don’t one hundred per cent get each other’s calling. I’m here looking at what’s going on in the here and now, trying to make a difference to everyday folks; she’s over there trying to solve mysteries from hundreds of years ago and yeah, I get it’s pretty interesting finding where Troy was and all that jazz, but is it really making life better for anyone now? Can’t really see it. But it’s meat and drink to River, and like I say, I’m proud of her.
All this stuff about Cleopatra’s tomb – well, I get why that’s more of a big deal, being full of rubies and gold and stuff. But I knew River would just flip for the history of it all, so I had to bring her along. In fact – not quite sure why I didn’t call her in earlier. Still, she’s here now, so it’s all good. We work pretty well together, bouncing ideas and so forth. Harry and me, we’d got a bit of a rhythm going, but that can’t replace the rapport you get with someone that’s pretty much literally your other half. Way to split that egg, Mom!
Talking of Harry – I was getting vibes off River that she wasn’t into him, but what I was getting from Harry was the exact opposite. Well, nuh-uh. That’s a big no.
Anyway, River and I are still coming to terms with the fact that someone’s tried to kill us, and she wants to know everything that’s been going on. ‘Right from page one,’ she says, which I found a bit of a weird way of putting it – but then she’s the one with all the book learning, maybe that’s how she thinks about things. Yeah, I had to study for my PI licence, but … well, let’s say she’s probably got every single volume of those encyclopedias and I reckon she’s read them all too, Aar right the way through to Zu.
She drags me out into the corridor so we can talk privately. She wants to know everything, so right back to the beginning I go. I tell her the whole story. Wallace, the letter, the ruby. George Badger. The map, Harry, Wallace’s murder. Peterson-Lee’s arrest and release. The re-disappearance of the ruby. All the way up to right here and right now, somewhere above the Atlantic on a flying boat, on our way to Egypt and – we hope – the discovery of the century and the Angel Detective Agency Inc. becoming a household name.
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