by Rod Duncan
“Your brother wouldn’t shoot a pigeon, would he?”
“What difference would it make?”
“His life seems upside down,” she said. “Sleeping in the day, working at night. I thought maybe...”
“Maybe he breaks the law instead of catching others who do?”
“I didn’t mean it so forcefully,” she flustered.
“I should hope not!”
“But can you blame me for wondering?”
Indeed my brother was all too fascinating for her. I once again resolved that they should never meet. “Don’t worry for his morals,” I said. “Any brother of mine is as honest as me.”
Julia’s visit had lightened my mood, in spite of our argument. But on the third day of the fog, I could no longer bear the confinement of the boat. Nor could I sit passively and watch the calendar counting down the inexorable approach of my financial ruin. Though I had received no word from the Duchess, there remained one dangling thread for me to reel in. Thus, I resolved to venture into the gloom.
I opened my wardrobe and stroked a hand across the hanging clothes. Freedom of movement is more precious to me than a waist small enough for a man to encircle with his hands. Thus I keep the combined weight of my corsetry and other undergarments well below the three and a half kilogram maximum recommended by the Rational Dress Society. But on this day of penetrating cold, I selected a fuller skirt with two petticoats beneath and was grateful for every layer, not minding the load pressing down on my hips.
The journey from the wharf into the city of North Leicester is simple enough in summer. But had I not made the same trip a hundred times before, I would have become lost. Though daytime, the scenery was so changed by the blanketing fog that I walked clear past the first omnibus stop before realising I had overshot, and was forced to retrace my steps, feeling foolish though there was no one to see.
With a long scarf wound over my hat to protect my ears, I picked my way along the same route I had trodden disguised as a man. Today there was little risk of being seen and no chance of being followed, but I still kept my flintlock gripped inside my rabbit skin muffler.
On entering Cheapside I ducked into a doorway and stood a moment, getting my bearings. The fog has a way of seeming like a living thing. Thickening here and thinning there, it takes on forms such as the tentacles of a submarine creature, reaching out of dark places then withdrawing. Sounds are dulled, strengthening the impression of being underwater.
Two shadows passed some twenty paces distant: a man in a top hat and a woman who led him by the hand, doubtless towards her lodgings. Soft in the distance a beggar called. It was the voice I had been listening for.
Though the Backs is poor, so much wealth passes through it, crossing the border between the Republic and the Kingdom, that even an old beggar might survive on the scraps. Tracing the crumbling brickwork with the fingers of my left hand, I picked my way towards the voice, hearing it call again, like a distant lighthouse.
“Spare a coin for an old girl’s folly.”
For all the wood alcohol she must have consumed in her life on the street, she saw me before I could make her out.
“Have mercy, miss,” she said.
She stood there in the hollow of the doorway clutching a bottle just as she had done last time. I slipped in beside her.
“Did a young man speak with you six nights back?”
“I should not say.”
“He is my brother.”
“You’re afraid for his virtue, miss?”
“For his life. There were three men after him. One wore a top hat of unusual height. The other two were muscled like bulls.”
The old woman was frowning, peering at me more closely. “You and your brother are much alike,” she said.
Feeling embarrassed by her close inspection, I turned and cast my eyes in the direction of the coffee house. “My brother told you he’d return,” I said. “But it proved unsafe.”
“I saw three men, just as you say. But a full five minutes beyond your brother. They’d no sight of him. No way had they followed.”
The implication of the old woman’s words did not reach me all at once, but spread through my mind like ripples after a stone has been dropped into a pond. If I had not been followed, they already knew where to find me. No one knew of the meeting save myself and the Duchess. I could not believe she had arranged it as a trap. Perhaps her letter had been opened, read and re-sealed before arriving in my hand. Yet I had seen no sign of tampering.
I was readying myself to leave, when the old woman said, “Beg pardon, miss, but you can’t magic a coin as your brother did?”
So I pulled a hand from my muffler and passed it before her face to prove it empty. Then I touched it to her cheek, trapping a silver fivep’ny between my fingers and her leathery skin.
She smiled broadly as I held it up for her to see, but instead of snatching it, she took my hand and gently placed it back against her face.
“Where do you sleep?” I asked.
“Here. Or anywhere.”
“In the workhouse you’d have a roof. A fire too.”
“They don’t let no drink in the workhouse, miss.”
I took back my hand and gave her the coin, which she accepted, though I sensed my touch had been worth more to her.
“Tell your brother I did good,” she said.
“I will.”
She moved in closer and whispered. “I asked round Cheapside. No one knew the toff’s name. But one knew his job, or said he did. Tell your brother, take care, miss. For the man who followed is an agent of the Patent Office.”
Chapter 5
For every skill there is a master. Therefore, let the escapist tie his knots, let the lawyer draft his contracts and let the agent of the Patent Office sign warrants of death.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
Though I work within and between the laws and had been reading The Intelligence Gatherers’ Guide to Legal Process with Julia for two years, I could not call myself an expert.
The Gas-Lit Empire spans the globe. Every nation within it has a different set of laws and punishments. Each has its own quirks and loopholes.
In the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales the aristocrats hold wide-ranging privileges and are protected by garrisons of men-at-arms, which are private armies in all but name. The royal family can call on any of the fighting forces of the nation and although its legislative power is gone, it has virtual immunity. Cold equality is the watchword of the Anglo-Scottish Republic, though it is an open secret that officials live well beyond their means and that the wealthy seem remarkably honest, for they are seldom found guilty of any crime. There are few who understand both systems, even among the ranks of the lawyers.
The Patent Office, the first institution of the Gas-Lit Empire, was established to stand apart from and above the law of any nation. Only that way could it be an independent guarantor of the Great Accord. For almost two hundred years its agents, aloof and mysterious as priests, had used their powers to expunge unseemly science from the world.
They had ushered in an age in which perfection predominated over innovation, or so the history books claimed. No patent laws curtailed the development of art and culture, yet these too had become quiescent, there being no shocks of war or technology to disturb the equilibrium.
I did not know when corruption had first begun to incubate. Such things were not spoken of openly. Rather, they were glimpsed in lewd cartoons and music-hall sketches. Laughter makes fear an easier travelling companion.
But I now feared that the Patent Office was looking in my direction. The discovery chilled me. Under the fog I had no protection from my darker thoughts and found myself wallowing in memories from childhood.
But on the seventh day after my escape from the Darkside Coffee House, the wind veered westerly and the fog began to clear. On the eighth day the sun broke through and colour returned to the world. Long grass bowed down by dew became a scatter of diamonds.
/> The inhabitants of the working boats emerged full of urgency as if afraid the weather might turn once more. The coal boatman’s wife strung two clothes lines between trees on the embankment. Her daughters hung out the washing while her son pulled back a length of the tarpaulin from the hold and began shovelling coal into a smaller boat tied to the bow. The doors of the boathouse lay open and I could hear the dull hammering of someone beating out sheet metal.
Hoping that vigorous activity might help me shake off my dark mood I set about washing the porthole windows, wiping away the greasy residue of the previous week. Then, as the dew cleared, I laid my blankets over nearby bushes to air in the sunshine. Two men had rowed across the canal and were cutting a fallen elder into logs, singing in time to the strokes of their saw.
“You want to buy firewood?” one called when they stopped to catch their breath.
“I’m well set for coal,” I said, although it was a lie.
At noon, a small dairy boat chugged along the cut, the boatman shouting out his prices as he approached. Seeing me wave, he let the engine idle and steered in close enough for me to hand over a few copper coins and receive a thin wedge of cheese in return.
The noise of industry had subsided now and smoke rose from stoves up and down the cut. I sat on the aft deck, softening the end of a stale loaf by dipping it in my tea.
That was when I heard my name called and turned to see Mrs Simmonds advancing along the towpath, waving an envelope above her head.
“Expensive paper,” she said, when she had drawn near.
I watched her rubbing it between her ever-inquisitive fingers. “Fortune shines on us,” I said.
“I shall deliver it to your brother when he wakes.”
Frustration was building in me, for she stood side-on, with the envelope just out of my reach. “Has it the mark of the Kingdom postal service?” I asked. “He anxiously awaits a message from a client in Buckinghamshire.”
Mrs Simmonds played out the charade of examining the letter as if she had not already extracted all the information there was to glean without actually steaming it open.
“Buckinghamshire indeed,” she concluded. “Bletchley to be precise.”
“Then it would be best I wake him with it directly.”
Perhaps caught off guard by this development, she turned towards me, bringing the envelope within my range. I shot out a hand and grabbed it.
“Oh...” she said, startled.
For a moment we stood, each holding a corner of the crisp ivory paper, Mrs Simmonds on the towpath and me, from the vantage of Bessie’s small aft deck, standing a few inches taller.
“My brother is sure to be grateful for your trouble. But I’d have checked in at the office myself and saved your shoes the towpath mud.”
“Oh,” she said again, then let go.
Making a small curtsy, I slipped away inside, closing the hatch behind me to be sure she could not follow.
My dear Mr Barnabus,
I wish to express my enduring gratitude that you generously agreed to consult with me. And gratitude also for your kind acceptance of my commission. I am this day dispatching by trusted courier 70 gold sovereigns, which I offer as one third payment for your services. On receipt of your report, I will dispatch a further third. The balance will be paid on the safe return of the one sought. Thus the combined fee and expenses will be 210 gold sovereigns.
I trust you will find this arrangement acceptable.
Chapter 6
Only two kinds of men can be conned: those with vices and those without.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
The Duchess had made no mention of the thugs who had ended our meeting in such precipitant manner. Nor the final backward glance with which she had pierced my double identity. Yet it seemed these peculiarities had not deterred her.
I might yet earn Leon’s money in time.
Locating Harry Timpson’s Laboratory of Arcane Wonders was not going to be easy, however. Timpson had elusive ways. He’d jal the gaff in double-quick time, making pitch where the fancy took him, sending barkers into the towns around to post daybills on any fence, wall or tree big enough to take one, announcing to the world that the famous impresario had arrived.
But just as quickly, on a whim it seemed, after as many shows as Timpson pleased, they would scarper the tober, disappearing in the night. An octagon of yellowed grass and a thread of smoke from a heap of bonfire ash would be all that was left to be wondered at by passing jossers in the morning.
There would be horse dung in the roadway, by which the direction of departure might be guessed. But Timpson had a way of doubling back to make false trails. Long and meandering was the route he took. Thus it would be years before any return, by which time such small debts as they had left unpaid might be forgotten.
Yet only the dead are beyond finding.
The central post house in North Leicester was a classical building of sandstone columns and marble floors. A place of long moustaches and longer rule books. I clipped up the steps and into the echoing lobby dressed in a coat and skirt of sober blue; a shade much beloved of good Republicans. The image of respectability would be unlikely to withstand close inspection however. A plunge of lace below the neckline of the blouse permitted glimpses of my skin beneath.
“Can I help you?” asked the young gentleman at the reception desk, his voice hushed.
I offered him a flustered smile. “I’ve been expecting a letter from my father in Newcastle. I fear it may be lost.”
“The fog may have delayed it.”
“Is there a way of checking?” I asked, discreetly sliding a coin across the desk. “It’s been three weeks.”
He palmed the coin smoothly enough to make a prestidigitator smile. “Three weeks, you say? That would seem overdue.”
His shoes squeaked on the polished stone as we walked to the desk of an overseer, who enquired if a receipt for the transaction existed. It did, I informed him, and produced a document of paper so thin it seemed translucent. Removing a pair of thick-lensed spectacles, he brought it close to his face and examined the numerous rubber-stamp marks and signatures. Without such documents the oiled machine of the Republic would surely grind to a halt. With them, anything was possible.
Nodding sagely, he dismissed the young man from the reception desk. I let out a secret sigh of relief. My usual forger being unavoidably detained, I had been obliged to employ the services of an unknown.
Carpets replaced polished stone as the supervisor escorted me deeper into the building. On reaching a door marked “Superintendent of Postal Services” he knocked and ushered me inside.
The superintendent himself sported a moustache which extended an inch at least on either side of his florid face. “Charmed,” he said, taking my un-gloved hand and holding it as he dismissed the other man. He then took my coat and pulled out a chair for me.
I sat, leaning forward slightly, pretending not to notice the way his eyes lingered over the lace panel at the top of my blouse.
“Did the missing package... I mean to say, did the package contain anything of value?” he enquired, somewhat distracted.
“Indeed, sir. It was from my father and was therefore infinitely precious.”
“But child, my meaning was to the contents. Did it contain money?”
“It contained something more valuable. The location to which he was about to move. Without it I may never find him again.”
The superintendent’s bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. “Indeed?”
“He travels,” I explained.
“Then I don’t understand how we can help.”
“I thought that those who work in this post house might have seen the name of his travelling company – on a letter perhaps – and thus know a recent location.”
“You mean the fellows in the sorting room?”
The expression of hope and gratitude that flooded my face when he said this must have been pleasing, for he flushed a deeper red and stroked
finger and thumb across his facial hair.
“I fear you do not understand,” he said. “Many thousands of letters pass through this office every day. To expect the sorters to remember one name from among them... there is little hope.”
“I fancy they might remember this name,” I said. “My father works for Harry Timpson’s Laboratory of Arcane Wonders.”
The superintendent hid his surprise well, but could not conceal his change of manner. Admitting a connection with a family of travelling showmen had made me instantly exotic, putting me outside the narrow confines of accepted custom and restraint. I had become a gypsy girl, in his eyes, and therefore full of possibility.
He reached across the table and put his hand on the back of mine, a gesture more predatory than comforting. “Shall we see what we can do?”
He did not wish me to venture further into the depths of the post house. But on my suggestion that I would rather accompany him through those tight corridors than be left waiting in his office alone, he relented.
I knew I was approaching my destination when we stepped through a doorway and the thick carpet gave way to functional floorboards. The thrum of distant machinery vibrated the air. On opening a second door the sound increased twentyfold. We had arrived in the cavernous expanse of the sorting room. I came to a sudden halt, awestruck.
The machine, a leviathan, occupied the centre of the room. In size I would compare it to a small house. Around it scurried an ant-like army of workers. Some hefted bulging sacks into a hopper. Others carried neatly bound bricks of letters from the far end of the machine.
My mouth had dropped open in a manner that must have seemed comical or perhaps endearing, for the superintendent observed my reaction with evident enjoyment.
“I had not expected...” I began, but then could think of no words to complete the sentence.
“There are four other machines of this type,” he said. “One in Munich, one in New York, two others in China. But this, in the opinion of those who know, is the finest. Carlisle may be the nation’s capital, yet North Leicester occupies the preeminent position for our postal service.”
