“Shame. Will I get to meet him, though?”
“We’ll swap. You get cursing Cockney, I get Atlas Auric.” The cheap attempt at humour received the crackling silence it deserved. They weren’t sisters for nothing; Meredith knew when they had nothing more to say to each other. It was like the rest at the end of a laboured piano duet that had outstayed its welcome. “Right, I have to go now. Cathy will be here any moment, and Donnelly’s waiting. But I want you to call me when you’ve seen Derek again, tell me what happens.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n. And you let me know where the sleuthing goes. Leave some for me.”
“Will do. Bye.”
“Bye, Merry.”
She hovered the receiver over its hook for a moment—every time she hung it up felt like severing her umbilical to home—and then set it down with fond reverence. Her heart ached at its primitive roots. Now that the perceived gulf between them had become reality, a reality spanning a full airship ride, she missed Sonja more with each passing day. It was the nature of magnetism: if you pressed two like poles together they repelled one another; if you held opposing poles too far apart there was no attraction. Somewhere between the two, then, lay the secret of sisters parallel: that happy medium between push, pull, and forever.
But would they ever find it, the way things were heading?
“Miss Meredith, can I have a word, before Swanny (Donnelly’s nickname for Cathy, referencing both her elegant swan-like beauty and her sometimes prissy, virginal attitude) tells me to wipe my bleedin’ feet or som’int?”
“Yes. What have you got for me?”
He’d arrived not a minute before Sonja’s call, and had had plenty of time to arrange his documents while waiting on the settee. “Well, I can tell you your man, Westerfeld, is being paid by one Claudette Clochefort, widow of—”
“Armand Clochefort.” She sat beside him.
“Right you are, and my man who used to work in the Deuxieme Bureau says it’s not for peanuts either. Madame Clochefort wanted the goods on your dad, to dish all the dirt she could on him, so she commissioned this fellow Westerfeld, a raker-for-hire, who has connections all over. None you’d brag about in public, though, if you get my drift.” She nodded. “Anyhoo, he was at it for some time, and was largely responsible for discrediting your dad in the public’s eye these past couple of years. But when things went arse up’ards—‘scuse me, all to pot—with his spying in Norway, he convinced Madame Clochefort he’d done all he could as a raker. It was never going to be enough to avenge her husband’s death. When she heard the professor was setting out on another underground journey, she must have seen it as an egregious insult to her old man’s memory. So she crossed the line, flipped. And Westerfeld was given permission to use his...other skills. To make sure your dad never reached Africa alive.”
Meredith swallowed. “Fat chance. Father cracks on like nobody’s business once he’s started out. They’ll never catch him.”
“No, I don’t think so either. Your dad is protected by powerful friends. I found that out too.” He gauged her reaction, gave a little nod, must have seen what he wanted to see. Calmness? Lack of surprise? “And that’s that. It’s nothing but a vendetta, Miss Meredith. Far as I can tell, you’re not in any danger on that front. Madame Clochefort has the knife in your dad, but that’s where it stays.”
“The evil bitch. Wait till she hears the news that Father’s conquered Subterranea a third time, peeing all over her husband’s lies. I hope she chokes on it, the Frog whore.” Donnelly pretended to squirm under her abusive language, to not know where to look. It made her laugh. “But you’ve done splendidly, Donnelly. I knew I was right to hire you.”
“Tell that to your Swanny, eh? She might not chew on me quite so hard in future.”
“I’ll put her straight. Now, what’s all this?” She indicated the documents he’d fanned out on the settee next to him. “Looks interesting.”
“Very. And I think you’ll like what I’ve found. That book you gave me, the Shadow Players, was on the right lines all along. The Rule of Eight, dead on. The author, Villiers, also published verse in his spare time, and he included a rather strange poem at the end of the last collection he printed, untitled and unsigned, eight stanzas long. An old colleague of mine who’s worked in used books since his teens assures me unsigned verses like these have been a part of literary lore for the past fifty years or so. No one talks about ‘em publicly, but that’s no surprise, right? Apparently it was an insider’s way of communicating, of smuggling out Atlas secrets. Say, do you happen to have the pocket watch you found?”
“The verse tells us how to open it?” She practically tore it from her dress pocket, offered it to him.
“You keep it for now. See what you can make of this first.” He read scribbled lines from a tatty sheet he’d folded many times:
“The tower skyward trends; hold true—
Within abideth precious few.
Attraction beats the iron gait,
So tend the field from twelve till eight.’
“I never was much cop at riddles.” He scratched his stubbly chin. “How about you?”
“Sadly lacking. My sister was always the game player. I wonder if I should ring her.” Then she went over the last couplet in her head—something in the ostentatious word play sat up and piqued her intuition. “Come now, we can make a go of this. The clues are like cherries on cream.”
“What?”
“They stick out a mile.”
“Oh? Let’s see.” Donnelly flapped the sheet of paper taut, then traced his finger over the scrawled text. “Well, we can assume the ‘tower trending skyward’ refers to the engraving on the front of the case, the Leviacrum tower. ‘Hold true’ might mean we should do that literally?”
“I see where you’re going. We should hold the case upright, so the tower really does point skyward.” She did that, waited, then when nothing happened, shook it, even held it against her ear to listen for something minutely awry inside, a click, a slosh of liquid, anything. “Read those last two lines again, carefully. My sister said something once about puns being the chinks in a riddler’s armour.”
“Attraction beats the iron gait,
So tend the field from twelve till eight.”
“Whoever wrote that made no attempt to tie it to the previous couplet thematically, at least none that I can see. It’s calling attention to itself. Let’s see—” She counted with her fingers, “—attraction, iron, field—they all pertain to magnetism, do they not?”
“I reckon so. But magnetism in what sense? Literal? Figurative? And what does that have to do with a clock?”
“How do you mean—oh, oh, the twelve till eight! Well, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“We are?”
Meredith closed her eyes in order to focus. “The clock face is this casing: they have the same shape. So...‘Tend the field’ might be telling us to tend, as in to move something around the clock face...something with a magnetic field...from the top of the tower, twelve o’clock, all the way around to eight o’clock.” She opened her eyes. Donnelly was frowning. “Don’t you agree?”
“It’s clever. And if we’re talking about opening a mechanism, then a magnet makes as much sense as anything. Look, we’ve already tilted the thing upright. If that moves something into position at the top—a weighted iron needle, say—then we might be able to use a magnet to shift it around the circumference...”
“To eight o’clock.”
“Exactly.”
“Brilliant. Bear with me two seconds.” Meredith dashed into the kitchen, where she rummaged through the worktop drawer full of practical odds and ends. Cathy’s previous tenant had been a hoarder, and no one had bothered to clear this drawer after the old woman had left. She found the small bar magnet she’d spied a few days before, and dashed back to the settee.
It worked. The magnet clung to the top of the casing exactly as they’d supposed, and when she pulled it free and tried it at any other point,
it would not stick. The attraction was at that point only.
“Not bad, not bad,” he said. “Now give us a slow turn to eight o’clock. Here, I’ll hold the case while you move the magnet clockwise. Easy now.”
Despite her fingers trembling with excitement, Meredith kept the bar firmly on the rim and circumnavigated the invisible dial with remarkable steadiness. She gasped when the tiniest clink greeted eight o’clock, almost three quarters of the way around. Still the magnet held.
“See if you can move the little winder,” he whispered.
She daren’t breathe. Not that sharing air with Donnelly was unpleasant—far from it—but the immensity of what she might find inside, what it alluded to, the history, the hierarchy of this fearsome cult—it was all hers for the taking. After dozens of attempts to budge the tiny winder wheel these past weeks, would this be the moment it finally gave up its secret?
One full turn to the left was all it took. The two halves of the case sprang apart, and Donnelly caught the item that tumbled out before it hit the floor.
It was a monocle. Tinted red.
“Give.”
He grinned and peeked through it—“You’re looking in the pink,”—then handed it over.
Heavy for its size, the monocle had an ornate silver rim and a thick lens, maybe half an inch, that didn’t appear convex. Its red hue was the only thing distinguishing it from— “Wait, what was that?”
Donnelly leaned in, scrutinized it. “The colour’s deepened?”
“Yes. With the heat from my breath, I think. I’ll try again.” Sure enough, it changed from crimson to puce and back again in moments, and when she held it away the original red tint returned, as though that were its default colour at room temperature.
“Fascinating.”
“It’s amazing.” She opened a window and held the monocle in the breeze outside, smiled at Donnelly when the lens gradually shifted to a yellowish green. “A temperature-sensitive glass. Those people really do know how to keep a secret. Are you impressed yet?”
“Very.”
“Just call me an honorary Atlas master.” Meredith crept around the room, spying on her world anew through the rose filter. Everything lilted intimately. It was the colour of cool heat. A Martian might see things this way.
“Okay, Master, what is thy bidding? Seeing as you’ve got something to look through, shouldn’t we figure out what you’re suppose to look at? Apart from me.”
“Why, Mr. Donnelly, no need to be so embarrassed.”
He shrugged. “It’d take more than that, sweetheart.”
“I’ve seen paler beetroots.”
“Try a mirror instead of a spyglass and you’ll see who’s the beetroot, darlin’.”
She swallowed, felt her cheeks burn. But the excitement of discovery—the monocle, flirting with a grown man whom she fancied—trumped her shame on this occasion. What was his question again? The sound of a key fiddling in the lock downstairs snapped her from her fantasy. “Cathy’s back. Quick, give me the case. Hide your paperwork.”
“You don’t want Swanny knowing what you’re up to, eh?”
“She’d tell Aunt Lily, and they’d try and put a stop to it. So no.”
“Well, you’ve just joined the right club, by the sounds of it. Already a good ‘un at keeping secrets.”
“Sshh. Remember, you’re investigating Westerfeld for me. Nothing more.”
“Yes, Master.”
She heard Cathy’s boots creak the floorboards outside. “Offer you a cup of tea, Mr. Donnelly?” asked Meredith.
“Be delighted, Miss McEwan.”
The taxi arrived at five-thirty on the dot to take Meredith and Cathy to their first official social function together, a farewell party for the daughter of an immensely wealthy metalwork tycoon, a Mr. J L Pocock, who had supplied materials for the last several upward extensions on the Leviacrum tower itself. Jenny Pocock had recently won a prestigious commission in the British Air Corps based on the Barbary Coast, and was set to leave in a few days. It was therefore an engagement not to be missed, with all manner of influential military men, government and Leviacrum officials, and titled personages vying to impress the estimable Mr. Pocock and his daughter, who was by all accounts an ebony-haired hellcat with a reputation for possessing zero tact. She’d be a bloody airship captain, no question, fond of flogging to get her own way, but wealth was honey and she was the queen bee of the week—for eligible males with a sweet enough tooth, her marriage bed was worth all the grief that would undoubtedly follow it.
One queen bee, many suitors: rich pickings for any young woman yet to debut. Cathy had said tonight was the perfect opportunity for Meredith to display her charms. Grace and good humour could be spotted from across the room. It was a performance, then, to please everyone who might cast an eye in her direction, not just the person she was speaking to. Cynical conversation was a death knell if you had breasts in a place like this. Men of money liked women to be light and bubbly and elegant...and beautiful of course.
Hmm, Meredith fancied she’d rather be Queen Bee Pocock and dispense with tact altogether. If a man was honestly interested in her, he should be pleased to hear what she had to say on more than fashion, the weather, inane gossip; he should either welcome her opinion or be sent packing.
But no, she would be on her best behaviour tonight, if only for Cathy, who was risking her own reputation by vouching for the daughter of a vilified scientist. A social gamble, then, and one Meredith was obliged to buttress. And if no ideal suitor could be found, at least she’d have this opportunity to see firsthand the faces of those she’d read about, the real villains of the British Empire, who hid in plain sight and bore dangerous numbers from one to eight. She would keep a sharp eye for those numbers on pocket watches that told only one time.
Over two hundred and fifty guests mingled in quite spectacular fashion in the ballroom on the second floor. Envious gazes galore arrested Cathy and Meredith as they sauntered out in sapphire gowns cut low (but not too low) and pinched within an inch of their diaphragms. Silk leg-of-mutton sleeves, turquoise, with elbow-length lace gloves, and matching gilt-edged sapphire necklaces provided all the extra elegance they required to draw attention. A girl of weaker constitution might be tempted to run and hide, but not Meredith.
“Don’t they know it’s bad manners to stare?” Meredith stitched on a smile for the crowd, following Cathy’s example.
“Not when you’re to the manor born.”
They looked at each, groaned, and laughed. To Meredith’s surprise, one man joined in from the buffet to their right with a thoroughly over-egged belly chuckle. He was on her before she had a chance to swat him with her enormous sleeve. His hook nose, manic bulging eyes and bared teeth recalled the mid-cackle male half of Punch and Judy.
“What a delightful wit.” He sipped his glass of sherry, which was the same colour as his cheeks, then bared his teeth again. If Meredith could only throw a small coconut at that grin, she might win some sort of prize. “I love a good pun,” he said. How about a good-bye? “Chester Slocombe. Miss Jenny’s best friend since childhood. Always knew she’d rise to the occasion if only she—oh, ha, ha, ha! Did you hear that? Rise to the occasion...in an airship. Ha, ha, ha! Do you smoke it?”
“We’d rather not,” Meredith replied with an eye-roll, “if it’s full of hydrogen.”
“Hydrogen? Hydrogen. Oh, ha, ha, ha! My word, that is positively genius, Miss...”
“Singh.” With that Meredith made her escape, dragging Cathy by the arm and leaving the tipsy Mr. Slocombe to ponder why Miss Singh was suddenly absent, and whether there was another pun somewhere in that name, and why it wasn’t as funny as the others. “Please God, tell me they’re not all like him.”
Cathy mashed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. It was all she could do to bottle the hilarity.
“Laugh it up, Lady Muck. That was very nearly traumatic.”
“I’m sorry, but you handled it well. Very...curt.”
/> “I’ll never pun again as long as I live, I swear.”
“Come on.” Cathy composed herself and after a long questing glance around the room, sighted their first quarry and led the way. “It can only get better.”
“No, it had best get better.”
“O, ye of little faith.”
Three unsuccessful introductions later, one to an incredibly shy banker’s son, one to Essex’s highest-scoring batsman of the professional cricket season, and one to the drop dead handsome son of a prizewinning inventor—all of whom made their excuses and moved on shortly after hearing the name McEwan—Meredith’s anger began to bite, as it had that week in school when rumours of Father’s betrayal of his partner Clochefort had first made all the papers. The invisible albatross was hanging around her neck once more, and it made her want to slap faces, kick crotches, generally wreak vengeance on these unthinkably misinformed peacocks.
Cathy, on the other hand, even though she’d likely never been ostracised in her life before, took it well on the chin, the odd shrug or playful pout the only concessions to her disappointment. And Meredith didn’t want to disappoint her. Cathy should be the focal point of any gathering, not made to feel like a wallflower by dint of the dubious company she kept. But what could be done? They were jammed by contempt, that was all.
Then Cathy prevailed upon her older cousin’s friend, who was coach of the England Under 21s cricket team, to suggest an introduction. The young man he took them to was named Thurston Kingsley, a floppy-haired but very congenial, rather easy-on-the-eyes Oxford freshman who—thank God—didn’t react in any way to her surname. Cathy seized on this opportunity and slyly coaxed the old coach away, leaving Meredith and Thurston to chat alone near the resting orchestra.
“Nice dress—really suits you,” he said without a shred of irony or guile. And she was looking for both out of habit; many a time man and boy had troweled on the compliments with her imminent bed in mind—it was not hard to spot. Could this be the only agenda-less lad of her age group?
“Thank you. I like your tuxedo, very swish. Where can I get one?”
Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) Page 15
