by Winona Kent
“No,” said Charlie, “but you certainly have a quarrel with Mr. Deeley. And what better way to be rid of him than to have him arrested for arson? As for my concealment, I went to the manor to see Mr. Rankin. I was outside the garden gate when you were addressing the cabbages. And I was standing in the scullery when I saw you go into Mr. Deeley’s room.”
“So you did not see me remove any artefacts from the room? And you did not see me go into the inn and set the fire?”
“I did not. But I will swear to everything else.”
“So,” said the lesser Monsieur Duran, to Mr. Ferryman and Mr. Reader. “I entered Monsieur Deeley’s room to survey his belongings. Monsieur Deeley was no longer in my employ, and I wished for his artefacts to be taken away. I observed what was there, nothing the more. I am outraged to be accused of these criminalities.”
“Indeed, Monsieur Duran,” Mr. Ferryman replied. “Perhaps this young woman suffers from some sort of hysterical affliction, which I have heard is common among widows and maids who want for a husband.”
“I do not suffer from a hysterical affliction!” Charlie shouted.
But it was no good.
“Come, Mr. Deeley,” said Mr. Ferryman. “We have new lodgings for you. Less comfortable than the manor, perhaps, but you will find this door is equipped with a sturdy lock.”
“How is it you were awake and here, at this late hour, Monsieur Duran?” Mr. Deeley shouted, over his shoulder, as Mr. Reader manhandled him towards the village lockup in the cellar of the inn.
“I was very much vexed,” his former employer replied, narrowing his eyes at Mr. Deeley, “by the events of yesterday. I was not able to sleep. And so I came upon the walk, down the hill, to here. It is a night habit I have often indulged.”
Charlie turned to Sarah in desperation. “Are we not able to appeal to the village magistrate? This is ridiculous!”
“It is of no use, Catherine,” Sarah replied. “The magistrate is Mr. Ferryman himself, elected by the villagers.”
“What about the principle of innocent unless proven guilty? What about Mr. Deeley’s legal rights?”
“He shall hang,” the lesser Monsieur Duran replied, with a shrug. “And there is an end to it. I bid you good night, Madame Collins, Madame Foster. Sleep well.”
Chapter 29
It was very early in the morning, almost sunrise, and the smoke from the fire was still creeping over the village, settling over ponds and streams, lurking in dips and gulleys and drifting over the green like a foul-smelling fog.
Charlie had followed Mr. Reader and Mr. Ferryman as they had taken Mr. Deeley down to the dark cellar underneath The Dog’s Watch Inn, where Mr. Ferryman kept his barrels of ale and whatever else he was smuggling in from abroad.
And she had said goodbye to Mr. Deeley with a silent, desperate look. Which Mr. Deeley had returned as they’d pushed him through the darkened doorway.
And then, she’d walked back to the cottage with Sarah. And after Sarah had gone back to bed, Charlie had returned to the Village Oak.
The pain from her inflamed appendix was causing her to struggle for breath. This wasn’t good. In fact, it was very very bad.
She switched on her mobile. 56%.
She used up precious battery power to send another urgent message to Nick.
He was probably still asleep. He wouldn’t be awake for hours.
Charlie switched off her phone, and closed her eyes, to wait.
Nick was, in fact, very much wide awake. He’d been awake all night, existing on mugs of strong coffee he’d brewed one after the other, with lashings of cream and entirely too much sugar.
He’d isolated the virus. The clever piece of programming had attached itself to Sarah Foster’s family tree entry.
He’d removed it. Studied it. Dissected it. Had noted and identified all of the coded commands. Except one, which he’d never seen before. Was that it? The binary blip? The elusive tachyon particle?
For the hundredth time that night, Nick clicked on Sarah Foster’s square. For the hundredth time that night, the space just in front of him reacted with the same uncertain and incomplete flicker and shimmer.
It was there. It existed. And yet, the reaction was incomplete.
There had to be something else. A catalyst. Something that triggered the binary tachyon particle to do its work. Something that could provide a massive nanosecond of electricity, an energy field strong enough to propel Charlie backwards in time.
Something like a sprite.
Nick considered his cat, George, who he’d named after one of the Beatles, and who always liked to help him with his research by sitting on his papers and purring.
“Where would you look if you wanted to find a sprite, but there wasn’t a sprite nearby?”
George responded with a flick of his tail. He was, in fact, quite interested in Particle Physics. He sometimes presented research of his own, mostly to do with small rodents which he’d discovered in the garden, and which he liked to bring to Nick, in his mouth and usually mostly dead, for a second opinion.
“Or, alternately, where would you look if you wanted to find the energy that a sprite was responsible for generating?”
George flicked his tail again. He found this sort of dialogue fascinating. His favourite TV program was that one about The Doctor who went everywhere in a blue police box. This was precisely what Charlie needed. A blue police box sort of thing that went backwards and forwards in time. Preferably with a man who wore a hat and a long striped scarf at the controls. But he would let Nick work that out for himself.
It was time to go into the garden to seek out breakfast.
George jumped down from the desk, which freed up Nick’s papers, so that he could scribble some additional calculations onto them.
Nick shook his head in despair. He was only going to have one chance to get it right. And he was running out of time.
He needed to walk. A walk was always good for clearing his mind. And he could check to see if Charlie had left any more messages.
He went downstairs and, taking his cane, trudged the several village blocks over to the green, and the oak, which, at this very early hour was attended by the remains of the night shift: a group of tree protectors who were playing games, completing crosswords, updating their Facebook pages, knitting.
And that juggler. The one he’d seen earlier, dressed as a fool, tossing shiny blue and red balls up into the air and catching them as he’d ridden by on his unicycle.
The unicycle was now propped up against Ron Ferryman’s flat-tired bulldozer. And the juggler was playing with a set of clackers. Fascinated, Nick watched as he adeptly swung the little red plastic balls together with one hand, so that they banged together underneath, and then over the top of, his fingers. He hadn’t seen clackers since his childhood. And this fellow was very good.
Still watching, he switched on his phone.
There was indeed another missive from Charlie. Telling him that she only had 56% battery power left, and was worried about using it up. And something else.
The Dog’s Watch has caught fire. Shaun Deeley’s been arrested for arson. Is he hanged? Is he transported to Australia? What happens to him? Please find out!
Nick closed his eyes and let his breath out. This was a complication he certainly didn’t need.
He dialled Sam’s number, waking her up.
“What is it now?” she complained, into her phone. “Have you any idea what time it is?”
“Sorry, Sam. I need a favour. Charlie needs a favour. A fellow named Shaun Deeley. Can you look him up, see if there’s anything about him online?”
“Why?” Sam answered, suspiciously. “What’s he done?”
“Tried to burn down The Dog’s Watch, apparently.”
“What, now? Today? I didn’t hear any sirens…”
“Not today. In 1825. I think there’s a website. I’ll text you the URL. It has all the historical data on capital punishment in England. Perpetrators and victims, ac
cusers and witnesses, courts and judges, names and dates and verdicts. Ring me back as soon as you find out anything.”
“And what are you doing in the meantime that prevents you from looking all of this up yourself?”
Nick looked at the juggler, and his clackers.
And had a thought.
Yes.
Brilliant.
Why hadn’t be considered that before?
“I’m going back to take another look at Charlie’s laptop. I think I might have figured out where all that energy came from to send her back in time.”
There.
He’d found it.
Not one rogue virus, but two.
A second string of coding had attached itself to another of Charlie’s family tree entries, this one belonging to Lucas Adams. Both entries had been open on her laptop when Nick had discovered it on her desk. He’d located the first virus easily. And had assumed it was the only one, because the second virus had been masked.
But now he’d unmasked it.
And there it was, complete with its own binary tachyon particle.
Tentatively, not quite knowing what to expect, he clicked on the square belonging to Lucas Adams.
He was rewarded with a familiar flash of brilliant mauve.
And that subtle ripple, that tiny uncertain crease in time and space he’d seen when he’d clicked on Sarah Foster’s entry.
What Charlie had done was open both virus-infected pages concurrently, which had caused their binary tachyons to slam together, like the juggler’s shiny red clacker balls. The resulting explosion of energy, lasting mere nanoseconds, was the mechanism that had shot Charlie back in time.
Nick didn’t dare put his theory to the test.
The best he could hope to do was recreate the right conditions on Charlie’s laptop. And then what? There hadn’t been any virus—or any laptop, for that matter—in 1825, to bring Mrs. Collins forward. There had just been Charlie, propelled backwards.
Perhaps Mrs. Collins’ journey had simply been a case of being in the right place at the right time. A variation on the Pauli exclusion principle: no two identical bodies may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously.
So if that was the case, all he needed to do for the reverse to occur, was once again ensure that Mrs. Collins was in the same place, at the same time, as Charlie. And then activate the two strings of code, slam the tachyon particles together…and it would be done.
Simple.
And midnight tonight would be the optimal time for the transfer to take place. If he delayed any longer, he wouldn’t be able to give Charlie her instructions.
Well.
The first step in the process was to take Charlie’s laptop back to the theoretical launch pad: her cottage.
Letting himself in through Charlie’s kitchen door, Nick was struck by the emptiness. And the quietness. When Charlie was here, there was noise. She had music playing, or had left the telly on upstairs. Or she was busy on her laptop, keys clicking as she looked something up on Google, or typed the details of one more nearly-forgotten aunt into her family tree.
But Charlie was not here now. Nick could actually feel her absence, made all the more poignant as he caught sight of her bike, leaning up against the milk can umbrella stand, and her helmet, plunked into the wicker basket on its handlebars.
He wandered into the sitting room, past her clutter. Charlie’s home could never be neat and tidy. It just wasn’t in her nature. She thrived on chaos.
He smiled. What better person to find herself tumbled back two centuries into the past. The ultimate in chaotic particle juggling.
He placed Charlie’s laptop on her desk, next to the Wi-Fi hub, the printer and scanner and wireless mouse. And that clock. Nick stopped to admire it, to pick it up and turn it over in his hands. Time really had become something malleable and mutable, just like the images in the clever Dali painting.
His phone was ringing.
Sam.
“What did you find out?” he asked.
He could hear pages being flipped. Sam had a notebook where she kept jottings about her patients, reminders about prescriptions, the names of songs she’d heard on the radio. Things she thought Roger might like for his tea, on those occasions when he hadn’t forgotten their wedding anniversary.
“Listen,” she said, into her phone. “Shaun Deeley. I found a mention of him working at the manor. In a list of all of the employees that someone made in 1823. And someone else discovered in 2009, and put on a website about working conditions in early 19th century rural England. And he’s even on the Stoneford Village History site. One of the kids at the Youth Club did a page about famous local criminals. Shaun Deeley, arrested for setting fire to The Dog’s Watch Inn. Charlie must have forgotten. Or never saw it.”
“What happened to him?” Nick asked.
Sam paused.
“What?” Nick said.
“The fire at The Dog’s Watch was deliberately set. But Shaun Deeley apparently never went to trial. He was declared insane and sent to live out his days at the Bethlem Hospital in London.”
“You mean Bedlam?”
“Yes, Bedlam, its nickname. In the building that’s now the Imperial War Museum, Southwark. I found his name in a list of the inmates…one of the ‘unfortunates.’”
“That’s a shame,” Nick said, meaning it.
“Yes, I thought so too. Will you tell Charlie?”
“I’ll have to,” Nick said. “She wanted to know. Thanks, Sam.”
Walking back to the green, he composed, in his mind, what he was going to say.
Bad news about Mr. Deeley, Charlie…but at least he doesn’t hang…
And now for some good news. I’m bringing you back. Wait in your cottage at midnight. In your sitting room. In the same place you were when you arrived, beside the desk. And we’ll hope for the best.
He imagined Charlie reading that, and decided to change the wording.
In the same place you were when you arrived, beside the desk. I’ll check with you at six tonight to make sure you’ve got this message. See you when you get here.
He arrived at the tree, and took out his phone.
Chapter 30
The sun was rising. Smoke from the night’s fire coloured the pale morning sky with a pink-grey smudge. All of the village smelled of burned wood.
Charlie had not returned to her little bedroom in the cottage. She’d fallen asleep beneath the Village Oak. And it was a fretful sleep, not a restful one. The pain from her inflamed appendix had lessened a little, but it had not stopped, and several times during what remained of the night it had woken her up, a nagging, prodding reminder of the urgent decision she was very soon going to have to make.
After each of these times, she’d tumbled back into unconsciousness, sleeping on fitfully.
And now, a hand was gently touching her fingers.
Charlie staggered awake. It took a moment for her brain to make sense of her surroundings. The hard ground she was lying on, the smell of the smoke, the dew-soaked grass and that terrible, terrible ache inside that would not go away.
It took another moment to make sense of the gentleman who was kneeling beside her, his kind face lined with concern.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked, hazily.
“I had thought,” Augustus Duran ventured, “of asking you a very similar question.”
Charlie sat up properly. “Why are you not in France?”
Augustus joined her on the grass, settling his back against the broad trunk of the oak.
“In the first instance,” he said, “I had no doubt whatsoever that the letter my son produced yesterday was a forgery. And his explanation was lamentable. Gaston is able to spell. Louis has been deficient in the subject since boyhood. The first letter of ‘Urgent’ has been a ‘U’ for as long as I can recall. Not an ‘E’. Not even in French.”
Charlie smiled.
“I departed believing I might spare you and Mrs. Foster from furthe
r disagreement with my son. But I realized, as I rode towards Southampton, that this was folly, and that my removal would likely result in more harm than good. And so I stopped for the night in the New Forest, and resolved to return this day.”
“More harm than good has resulted,” Charlie answered, unhappily, “although none of it is your fault, Monsieur Duran. Your son is despicable.”
“My disappointment in Louis,” Augustus replied, “far exceeds any sense of paternal loyalty I may once have harboured. Last night, I learned even more about his duplicity. You know of the Gypsies who live in the New Forest?”
“I do,” Charlie said. “They make their camp in the woods and come into the village to mend pots and pans, and to buy and sell horses.”
“I am well acquainted with one of the families,” Augustus provided. “I have shared their fire, enjoyed their food and their singing and dancing. Last night I discovered them in the midst of a celebration. A marriage, in fact. Fenella, who is the eldest daughter of the patriarch, Stefan, has agreed at last to a suitor.”
“A worthy celebration,” Charlie said.
“More so due to the fact that Stefan has fathered five daughters, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-four, including a pair of nineteen-year-old twins, and all have been happily married but Fenella.”
“Then the celebration must have been a long time in the making,” Charlie remarked. “Was there a feast?”
“Roasted hedgehog,” Augustus confirmed.
Charlie made a face.
“It would have been rude of me to refuse. Although I found the stewed rabbit much more to my liking.”
“I commend you on your gastronomical bravery.”
It was Augustus’ turn to smile.
“There was also boiled cabbage and cauliflower. And dumplings. And beer. Along with a very fine brandy. With which I drank a toast to Stefan, all five of his daughters, and Jobey, his son.”
“Jobey,” Charlie said. “Jobey Cooper?”
“Yes, the same. You know of him?”
“I have seen him in the village,” Charlie said. She stopped. She had given Eliza Robinson her word.
