The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  A look from Miss Chatterjee prevented him from using a word he would regret, and he ended simply by clearing his throat.

  “Your friend Mikael,” he added, “doesn’t seem to have a very clear idea of how it came about that you met her.”

  “It was at my great-aunt’s house,” Sophie said. “Didn’t Mikael tell you?”

  “Sophie’s great-aunt,” interrupted Miss Chatterjee, “is Miss Tabitha Hunter.”

  The commander’s head jerked around.

  “Miss Tabitha Hunter,” he said slowly, failing to conceal his surprise, “president of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research?”

  “Oh, I see,” said Sophie suddenly. “Mikael would only know her as Great-aunt Tabitha, not as Tabitha Hunter, and besides, he’s probably never heard of her, not being Scottish. I mean, she’s quite well known in Edinburgh—”

  “Indeed,” the commander muttered under his breath.

  “—but not in Denmark, where Mikael’s from.”

  “A séance at Miss Tabitha Hunter’s, and Mrs. Tansy no doubt the distinguished medium,” the commander said meditatively.

  Though it did not sound like a question, Sophie answered as if it had been.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “And she said some very odd things—I can’t really describe it, but there was something off about the whole business. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So when Mikael offered to help me find out more about her, it seemed like the perfect solution. Was—was her throat really cut?”

  Commander Brown made a graphic sweep with his hand across his throat, and Sophie thought she had never disliked anyone so much in her life.

  Miss Chatterjee frowned. During Sophie’s last words she had taken a small diary from her handbag and written a few notes with a silver pencil.

  “That gesture was quite inappropriate, Commander,” she said. “Do you intend to hold the boy overnight, or have you finished with him? I think Sophie might like to see he’s all right before we go.”

  “And who’s to say we’ve finished with Sophie, let alone with the boy?” said the commander in a menacing way. “It’s within my mandate to keep the girl here for seventy-two hours, so long as I notify her guardian and allow her to speak to an advocate.”

  “An empty threat,” said Miss Chatterjee, rising and tipping her head at Sophie to let her know she should stand. “Sophie’s told you what she knows. You can find her during the week at school or at her aunt’s on the weekend. In either case, I suggest you telephone in advance.”

  The commander raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “My other suggestion,” the teacher continued, “is that you release the boy at once. I believe that under the Hamburg Convention of 1919, you need a judge’s warrant to hold a Hanseatic national overnight without legal representation.”

  The commander’s jaw dropped.

  “Ah, I thought you might have forgotten about that provision,” Miss Chatterjee said. “I can assure you, however, that the other states in the League take it very seriously, especially in the case of a minor. If necessary, of course, I will telephone my friend at the Danish embassy first thing tomorrow morning to tell him you are in breach of the agreement.”

  The commander’s face suddenly relaxed. He laughed and stood up.

  “Miss Chatterjee, anyone foolish enough to tangle with you will doubtless find a formidable adversary. Happily in this case we’re on the same side. All I want is to put a stop to the bombings, and occasionally this leads me to measures of which you doubtless disapprove. The boy is being held in a cell here in the Vaults, but one of the subalterns has already telephoned his aunt and asked her to come and get him. When she arrives, he will be released into her custody. You’re welcome to see him now, if you like.”

  He picked up the telephone and spoke a few words to the aide, who appeared a minute later and took them back out into the waiting room, where he offered them tea or coffee. When they declined, he vanished.

  Sophie turned to Miss Chatterjee as soon as they were alone, and opened her mouth to speak. Miss Chatterjee pressed a finger to her lips and rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

  “You mean—listening devices?” Sophie said stupidly.

  Miss Chatterjee nodded and Sophie fell silent.

  Fifteen minutes later, the aide reappeared at the head of a retinue that included Mikael and four armed guards.

  “Sophie!” Mikael said. “I had to give them your name, there was no way around it. I hope you’re not in too much trouble—I know you’re not much used to it.”

  Sophie ignored Miss Chatterjee’s grim amusement. “Don’t worry about that,” she said, tormented by the idea of what Mikael had just gone through on her account.

  She was afraid to go closer while the guards’ semiautomatic machine guns remained on him. Now, as if reading her mind, one of the guards used the ring of keys at his waist to free the boy’s hands from their shackles.

  “You’re free to go, sir,” said the aide, “as soon as your aunt gets here, but the commander thought you might like a word first with Miss Hunter.”

  There was nowhere, really, to have a private conversation, but after looking at Miss Chatterjee for permission, Sophie led Mikael to one end of the bench.

  Mikael looked pale and exhausted and somehow younger than the last time she’d seen him. His skin had a whitish green pallor under the lights of the Vaults, and he looked as diminished as a newly shorn sheep.

  “Was it awful?” Sophie whispered, not sure if she was asking about the cells or the dead body.

  “Oh, Sophie, I’m so glad you didn’t have to see her,” said Mikael, burying his face in his hands. “She was just lying there in a pool of blood with her throat gaping open….”

  Sophie felt sick. She remembered the shadow like a wound on Mrs. Tansy’s neck the night of the séance. Great-aunt Tabitha would have called it a premonition.

  “I don’t blame the first officers on the scene for thinking I’d done it,” Mikael said, uncovering his face, though he still wouldn’t catch Sophie’s eye. “It looked awfully bad, but of course as soon as they saw there wasn’t any blood on me, they knew I couldn’t have done it.”

  “How did it happen that you were there?” Sophie asked.

  “Well, I did quite a bit of footwork, and after talking to what must have been twenty different cabdrivers and visiting a dozen or more hotels, I finally tracked her down at the Balmoral. I wangled an appointment—she may have been staying there under another name, but everyone knew she was a medium, and she was certainly still receiving clients. That’s when I sent you the note. I thought I’d be able to tell you all about the meeting by the time I saw you; I was going to surprise you. You did get my note, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, and there I was, cursing you for forgetting about our appointment! Oh, Mikael, I’m so sorry,” Sophie said, pounding his arm with one fist and wiping the tears from her eyes with her other hand. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she went on when he didn’t say anything. “You look awful!”

  “I think I had a very near miss,” said Mikael slowly. “I went up to her room at one o’clock, as we’d arranged, and she actually let me in herself and called room service to order lunch for the two of us.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Sophie. “Wasn’t she dead when you got there?”

  “No,” said Mikael, “it was much worse than that. While she was on the telephone, a knock came at the door. She looked rather frightened and motioned at me to hide. I threw myself into the wardrobe, feeling pretty silly. Once I’d got in, she actually locked the door from the outside!”

  “You were locked in?” Sophie said. “But—”

  “I can’t tell you exactly what happened next,” he said. “I heard her open the door to the room. Before she’d said more than a few words, though, I heard all sorts of noises: a thud as she fell to the ground, I expect, and some cries and blows and then a horrible gurgling sound. I think the intruder must have cut her throat. Naturally I st
arted pounding on the door of the wardrobe and calling for someone to let me out, but the murderer had vanished by the time I kicked open the door.”

  “You could have been killed!”

  “But I wasn’t,” Mikael said somberly. “It was she who was killed. It was completely vile, Sophie! And then the room service waiter got there, and he telephoned for the police, and it took a lot of time to clear things up.”

  “We did right by you, though, didn’t we, sir?” said one of the guards.

  Sophie had forgotten they must be listening in. She looked up now at the guard, who smiled. Miss Chatterjee was standing in the corner and attending closely to everything that passed between Sophie and Mikael.

  “Yes, certainly, Sergeant Fettes,” said Mikael, standing up and shaking hands with each guard in turn. “Can I have my things back again?” he added.

  The aide disappeared and came back a few minutes later with the duty clerk and a medium-sized metal box.

  “One key, a ten-shilling note, two shillings and threepence in coin, one pair of shoelaces, one pocketknife, three safety pins, a length of fishing line,” the clerk read out from a form.

  Mikael signed the form, swept most of the things into the front pocket of his trousers, then knelt to feed the laces through the eyes of his boots. His hands were shaking.

  Mrs. Lundberg arrived just then, the worried-looking professor in tow, and pounced on Mikael with a little scream.

  Minutes later they all found themselves thankfully outside the Castle walls.

  “Mikael, you look done in,” his aunt scolded. “And whatever will your mother say? She’ll be furious with me for not doing a better job at keeping you out of trouble.”

  “Mrs. Lundberg,” said Sophie, feeling quite sick with the need to confess, “you must know that it’s all my fault. It was because of something I asked Mikael to do that he ended up in this mess. I am so sorry and I beg your forgiveness, I really do.”

  Miss Chatterjee looked mildly pleased at Sophie’s taking responsibility for the whole thing, but Mikael’s aunt shook her head. “I’m sure you’re very sorry, Sophie,” she said, “but I wish you’d thought of this beforehand and been more careful.”

  “Don’t be angry with Sophie!” Mikael said, tugging on his aunt’s hand.

  “I’m fed up with both of you, that’s the long and short of it,” said his aunt, “and don’t expect me to forgive either of you before next Thursday at the very earliest.”

  She climbed into the front seat of the professor’s car.

  “Mikael, get in the back,” said the professor. “Sophie, I believe that was an invitation. We hope to see you at teatime on Thursday next week, just as usual. Will you be all right getting home?”

  “Yes,” said Sophie. “Miss Chatterjee will take care of me.”

  “We’ll drive the girl home,” added the woman constable, who had reappeared as they passed out through the gate into the esplanade.

  Sophie and Miss Chatterjee were back at school by ten o’clock, whereupon the teacher sat Sophie in a chair and gave her a thorough dressing-down.

  “I hope you know the trouble you’ve caused,” she said. “I have ahead of me what will no doubt be a long and unpleasant conversation with Miss Henchman, one in which I fear I’ll be hard put to persuade her not to suspend you. And yet I suspect that Miss Henchman is the least of your worries.”

  Sophie didn’t know what to say.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. “Thanks for coming with me tonight, and for knowing how to talk to that awful man.”

  “That type,” said Miss Chatterjee disdainfully, “will never understand why he is not so prepossessing as he thinks.”

  “You’re my hero,” said Sophie.

  The teacher gave a wry smile, as if it pained her.

  “Heroism is a fairy-tale concept, Sophie,” she said, her voice sharper than before. “The real world corrupts everything it touches. Don’t make me out to be anything more or less than a real and quite imperfect person.”

  Though the others were all agog to hear what had happened, Sophie used the excuse of it being after lights-out to postpone explanations until the next day. She fell asleep almost at once, her dreams haunted by the bulky shape of a female body splayed out in a pool of blood.

  FIFTEEN

  AT HERIOT ROW ON Friday evening Sophie suffered through a lecture from Great-aunt Tabitha that was an almost exact reprise of one she had received from Miss Henchman the day before, and on Saturday morning she presented herself in the hallway in the regulation white dress that all the girls wore to the Waterloo Day celebrations at school. Great-aunt Tabitha had booked a taxi for nine thirty. When they got to school, she paid the driver and escorted Sophie to the playground, rigged up for the occasion as a kind of amphitheater. There she plowed through the crowd to a pair of seats in the area cordoned off for Very Important Visitors, Sophie trailing in her wake. As a member of the school’s board of governors, Great-aunt Tabitha was entitled to sit here, but Sophie would have preferred to join the other fifth-form girls and their parents. Jean and Priscilla waved at her from across the way, but she saw several other girls pointing her out to their families, and the feeling of being stared at was not at all pleasant.

  Once everyone had taken their seats, the school orchestra fell silent, and Miss Henchman stepped up to the podium. Seated behind her on the platform were half a dozen visiting dignitaries, including a figure whom Sophie recognized only when Great-aunt Tabitha gave a quiet hiccup of indignation. It was the minister of public safety, their war-loving dinner guest from the week before. Sophie couldn’t see Nicholas Mood on the platform but felt sure he must be lurking nearby.

  The headmistress gave the same speech every year. Sophie’s attention began to drift, and Great-aunt Tabitha took out a tablet and began jotting down notes for a forthcoming lecture to the Glasgow College of Psychical Science.

  Half asleep, Sophie realized that Miss Henchman was introducing a second speaker. It was the minister herself!

  “I am indebted to your headmistress for this wonderful opportunity,” said Joanna Murchison. “Waterloo…we associate the word with the deaths of men who gave up their lives to keep this country safe. To our neighbors on the Continent, though, the word’s a synonym for Nemesis, something that might stop a respected adversary in his tracks. Schoolchildren in France are taught that Wellington ‘met his Waterloo’ on the eighteenth of June in the year 1815.

  “Speaking to you now,” the minister continued, “exactly a hundred and twenty-three years after that defeat, I say that it is time for us to reclaim Waterloo for ourselves: to embrace the idea that we may engage European troops once more on European soil, and that this time, not we but they will meet their Waterloo!”

  The crowd had begun to mutter, but the minister continued speaking. “Only one thing will let us reclaim the legacy of Waterloo. We must meet the combined forces of the European Federation on the battlefield, and we must beat them!”

  The noise in the audience rose. A small disturbance had broken out in the aisle leading up to the speakers’ platform. Suddenly something very low to the ground shot out past the front row, and a small squat figure swung up the metal scaffolding onto the platform itself. It was the Veteran. He had made his way on his low wheeled cart past the security detail, and as the audience looked on, he grasped the minister’s legs and pulled her to the ground, calling out all the while a string of words that sounded to Sophie like “Where’s my money?”

  Within seconds the guards reached the platform and tore the assailant off the minister, who got to her feet, looking shaken but not hurt. She was immediately surrounded by four of the bodyguards, and there was Nicko giving his arm to her and leaning over to whisper something in her ear. They all began to move at once, and in a flash she had been whisked away into a bulletproof chauffeured car.

  Meanwhile several other security officers had hauled the Veteran away, and a minute later the only trace of the assailant was the overturned doll
y, its wheels spinning uselessly in the air.

  After a brief consultation behind the podium, Miss Henchman stepped up to the voice-broadcasting system.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, do not be alarmed,” she said, sounding self-important. “The man who just accosted the minister is a local vagrant with a grudge against the government. The minister was never in any real danger, but unfortunately the security staff have decided she must leave at once. Sorry as we are to be deprived of the rest of what promised to be a remarkably rousing speech, we must put the minister’s safety before our own enjoyment. A round of applause for the minister!”

  Her request prompted only sporadic clapping, perhaps due to the suggestion that the minister’s safety mattered more than everybody else’s.

  “I always said Joanna hadn’t any spine,” said Great-aunt Tabitha after the school song and the moment of silence. They stood in a pocket of stillness amid a mad rush for refreshments. “Sophie, I simply can’t afford to take the time to negotiate that tea tent, and I don’t want to leave you here without a chaperone, not after what happened the other day. You’re to come with me now to IRYLNS, and while we’re there, I expect you to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

  IRYLNS? Sophie had always wondered what IRYLNS was like. It was a pity her curiosity would only be satisfied as a sort of penalty for misbehavior.

  They got into one of the taxis waiting outside the school.

  Great-aunt Tabitha asked the driver to stop in front of the Braid Institute for Neurohypnosis in Buccleugh Place, near the university. The cabbie had sized up Sophie’s great-aunt as soon as they got into the cab and shook his head with resignation when she didn’t give him a tip.

  As the car pulled away, Great-aunt Tabitha took Sophie’s hand and virtually dragged her ten yards further along the pavement to the front door of an ordinary-looking house next to the Braid Institute, a door whose brass plaque read ADAM SMITH COLLEGE.

  Great-aunt Tabitha rapped the knocker, which was decorated with a knobbly pair of hemispheres like the meat of a walnut. Just as Sophie realized they were bronze casts of the halves of the human brain, the door opened to admit them, and she had no time to puzzle out the meaning of this sinister icon.