Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta

by Jayne Barnard

  Over the consommé Maddie eyed the assembled guests. Would any of these have met the charming, scheming Sarah? As the soup cup was replaced with a plate of antipasti—an appetizer consisting of sardines, onions, and pine nuts in sauce—she wished she had hired Fanto for the evening, to take her to all the hotels at which the luxury-loving Sarah would be most inclined to reside. But then Sarah was very good at not being found. It would be fatal to let her know she was being sought. She’d simply disappear like she had in Cairo. No, like it or not, Maddie could do nothing to find Sarah tonight.

  She followed up the antipasti with a dish of fegato, or beef liver, since the only alternative main course was a polenta topped with tiny roasted birds. Not for anything would Maddie eat a bird the size of her beloved Tweetle-D. She shuddered. She’d left TD pecking out his pictures of the costumes onto pages of the hotel’s gilt-embossed stationery. His newest trick was to choose coloured inks according to the images stored behind his upgraded eyes, and the resulting gowns, she was sure, would fairly pop with vivid hues. The Russian Consul’s wife would not be wearing her fabulous alexandrite gown tonight because Carnevale had not yet begun. Maddie made a mental note to find out when she would be wearing it for the first time, and retired upstairs to edit her column on the subject, leaving the event’s name and date blank. At this rate, she would have a whole two weeks’ worth of columns written before Carnevale officially started.

  If only she had kept that image of Sarah Peacock from the wedding photograph in that Cornish newspaper last spring. It was hard to find someone with only a fake name and a year-old description.

  THE NEXT MORNING Fanto had no news of Sarah’s whereabouts. “It will not be long, signorina,” he assured her. “We gondolieri, we go everywhere. We see everyone. Will you stay at the atelier for lunchtime today? I could go many places to ask questions if I did not have to be there for eleven o’clock.”

  “If Serephene can stay for the afternoon, I will go with you to ask questions.”

  Serephene, when she landed in the gondola, whispered that she was happy to stay for the afternoon again. She could follow Madame Frangetti around and learn about the business side of running an atelier. Such skills as bookkeeping and inventory would be vital running her own fashion house someday. Maddie was about to suggest that an experienced seamstress like Zaneta would also be an asset when they swung out into the Grand Canal and were promptly splashed by the churning wake of an early vaporetto. She yelped, Serephene exclaimed, and Fanto, hastily steering across the next wave, assiduously apologized.

  When they arrived on the Rio di Noale, the blue-and-white flashing lights of a police launch were dancing across the water. Fanto slowed, allowing a second police launch to pull up to the landing stage. When its passengers had leapt out and hurried away, he called out to the launch’s pilot. The pilot helped the girls clamber from the gondola across his launch to the stone pier. As he did so, he explained the fuss to Fanto.

  Serephene, white-faced in the pre-dawn, translated it for Maddie. “There was a break-in at Madame Frangetti’s last night. The police are there now. Venice’s most famous policeman, Commissario Bruciato, is on the scene. Do we dare go in? What if we’re asked to show our identity papers?”

  “There’s Zaneta,” said Maddie, and rushed over to the woman, who was huddled with other seamstresses in the flickering light of the front-door flambeaux. “Was there truly a break-in? Was anything stolen?”

  “Niente. No things gone, no broke in,” Zaneta replied. “They must have found La Frangetti’s lost keys. Those door porters, they fell asleep and the ladri—the stealers—they walked right up the stairs. If Madame’s assistant had not slept in the room with the jewelled costumes, they might have taken everything.”

  “They went directly to that costume room?”

  Zaneta shrugged. “They didn’t know where the best ones were kept. They were at the top-floor when they were heard.”

  “Then how did they get away?”

  Another woman answered, and Serephene translated. “They took the back stairs down to the workers’ entrance and fled along the calle.” She took Maddie’s arm and pulled her away, into the shadows. “You heard what Zaneta said: they were on the stairs going up. Past the riches in the secret storage. It wasn’t costumes they were after. They were heading for Scottie’s lab, and his secret fabric formula.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE SECRET FORMULA. Was that what Sarah sought? She had been working for an American industrialist in Cairo last year, although her goal that time was a lost treasure. Had Sarah a chance to take Madame’s keys? Hurrying back to Zaneta, Maddie asked. “Yesterday, when you showed me that blue fairy gown for Signora Peacock?”

  “What about it? It is not stolen.”

  “No, but didn’t you say Signora Peacock was here yesterday morning, to have a last fitting?”

  “Yes. Quite early. Madame gave her a tour of the whole atelier. She said the English husband, Sir Ambrose, might invest if the new fabric is wonderful.”

  Maddie could have slapped herself. While she had huddled in the stuffy little room scribbling column inches about costumes, that blasted Sarah had been parading through the building on some spurious story of her erstwhile English husband.

  “Did Madame take her to the roof?” she asked, with a sinking feeling in her chest.

  “Assi. She was most interested in that handsome maestro in his balloon.” Zaneta laughed. “All of us are interested in him. Ha grande gambe! Oh, here comes il Commissario Bruciato and his nice sergente.” She waved at a plump man in the severe black of the police service. “Ciao, Vaniglio. Dove andando?”

  The plump man touched his cap-brim. “Alla panetteria, dove altro?”

  Zaneta shook her head as the man trudged away behind his superior. “Poor Sergente Vaniglio goes all day from one bakery to the next after his boss, and always to eat the less-good piece while il Commissario has only the best.”

  One of the door porters came out and called the women inside. As they moved off, Serephene muttered, “I don’t know whether I’m more angry about the break-in or that woman talking about my Scottie’s gambe, er, legs.”

  After that upset, the morning proceeded in the same fashion as the previous ones. Serephene worked with the apprentice fitters and then with the seamstresses. Maddie sat in the stuffy cubby scribbling. During the morning break she asked Zaneta if the police inspector had discovered the would-be thieves.

  “Him? Pah.” Zaneta’s pretty mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Il Commissario is fonder of la pasticceria—the pastries—than of the fashions. If we were un fornaio—a bakery—he would be most zealous. But today he rushes off to be the honoured judge at a pastry competition. Or so says Vaniglio. Il Commissario is a great trial to his hard-working sergente.” She handed Maddie a cappuccino. “It is good that you saw the best costumes yesterday. Frangetti will keep them locked up tight now, until they are delivered to the patrons.”

  Maddie instantly asked if Lady Peacock’s blue fairy costume had been delivered yet. Zaneta asked a young woman from the fitting floor, who nodded. “First one out this morning, it went,” Zaneta reported. The fitter did not know the hotel’s name, just that the messenger wore the public livery rather than one with a hotel crest. Another dead end. Where would W.Y. Knott, investigative reporter, look next?

  Meanwhile, Maddie could not stand by and let Serephene’s best beau be tricked out of his fabulous fabric formula, even though she could not see how any fabric could be worth so much. It wasn’t like the ancient silk nightdress of a long-dead queen. But every Steamlord’s daughter knew the right industrial process at the right time could make someone a lot of money, and surely, using spider-bat silk in fabric was a new process. Maybe this was all about money, and not about fashion houses stealing each other’s designs. If Knott turned in a third good exposé out of an unrelated fashion assignment, maybe CJ Kettle would finally offer an investigative assignment next time, instead of a fashion one.

  Wh
en lunchtime came, Maddie hurried up the roof stairs and into the airborne lab right behind Serephene. As soon as the love-birds were finished hand-kissing and blushing, she demanded, “Doctor McHoughty, did Madame Frangetti bring a dark-haired woman up here yesterday morning? Did she ask a lot of questions? Did you ever turn your back on her?”

  His greeny-blue eyes turned to her with mild puzzlement. “There was another woman. I canna call to mind her face. Would it be important, then?”

  “Yes, very. She’s quite likely an industrial spy, planning to steal your invention from under Madame’s nose.” As Serephene stared at her, Maddie hurried on, “I’ve run across her before. She has swayed secrets from many a more cynical man than you seem to be. Don’t let her back in. In fact, don’t let anybody in if you don’t know them.” She turned to the door. “I’m going to send for security equipment to better protect your lab. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  It went against all the rules for chaperones to leave an unmarried young lady alone with a man, but Maddie rationalized that she wasn’t a real chaperone anyway. From the distant end of the atelier’s rooftop, she could see far across the lagoon. Below was the squared-off port at the end of the Rio Di Noale. Shivering in the chill wind that rapidly ate its way through her black widow’s cloak, she lifted her veil and put a finger up for TD to hop onto. She brought him down level with her face.

  “Tweetle-D, listen. To Madame Saffron Taxus-Hemlock via Birdie.

  Dearest Madame, Sarah whatever-her-name-is has come to Venice. She might be using my name again. I haven’t found out where she’s staying but I think I know what she intends to steal: a new industrial process for cloth.

  Can you please send me some of those spy-spiders we picked up in Cape Town, and any other gadgets that might be useful for either catching Sarah in the act or tracking her to her lair? Many thanks, and thanks too for TD’s great new night-sight imager. He took some quite sharp images of a rat’s derriere the other night.” With the message ready, she set TD on the parapet and then huddled in its dubious shelter, waiting for one of the long-distance message hawks to zoom in.

  TD’s chirp brought her head up, but the sparrow was eying Scottie’s lab-rat, which sat on his haunches staring back, with his head tilted as it considered TD. Yesterday’s bandage was trailing, its loose ends fluttering in the chill wind. Gus chattered at TD, who chirped back. Of course, they couldn’t understand each other, but they looked like they were trying to.

  Maddie slowly stood up, and stretched out a hand in Gus’s direction, talking quietly to him. “Hi, Gus. Let me tie up that bandage before you trip on it.” She wasn’t sure he understood, but TD chirped at him again and he sat calmly while she adjusted the gauze and tightened the wrapping. She had just tucked the ends under when a message hawk back-winged above the parapet.

  Gus was gone so fast she didn’t quite see him move.

  With the message sent, Maddie wiped TD free of accumulated mist and returned to the airship. Serephene, her face half hidden by gigantic goggles, was bent over a length of clear tubing, gluing leather gaskets over a hole.

  “What are you doing?” Maddie asked, as her stomach rumbled. “I thought we were going for lunch before your afternoon session.”

  “I can’t.” Serephene laid a bead of steaming glue along an edge of leather with a brass implement. “I’m building Gus an escape hatch.”

  “How will he know to use it?”

  “I’ll teach him before I install it.” Serephene ran another line of glue. “Go ahead and eat without me. That café where we were freezing yesterday is supposed to have good soup, but I wouldn’t sit outside to eat it.”

  “Do you mind if I don’t return immediately? I need to search for that woman.”

  Serephene shrugged one blue-clad shoulder as she pinched the two pieces of glued leather between her fingers. “Try not to be seen leaving alone, so Madame can believe I left with you. And be outside in two hours. I can’t be late home again today or Nonna may have me watched.”

  At the public landing stage, Maddie conferred with Fanto. He had discovered from his fellow gondolieri three young English women fitting the general description of Sarah; if la signorina would allow him to take her to each of their hotels? They set off along the choppy water, but not before Fanto pushed a button that raised a segmented wind-break around the passenger seat. Each time they turned a corner the wind bounced in for a few gondola-lengths before settling again and she was soon chilled through.

  It was all to no avail. Neither of Sarah’s known aliases had registered at those three hostelries and nobody resembling her was among the guests sitting down to steaming, aromatic, afternoon coffee in the various lobbies. Too soon Maddie was forced to direct Fanto back to the atelier. By the time Serephene joined them, the tide was so high that the bridge arches between the atelier and the Grand Canal were impassable by gondola. Fanto, with many apologies, escorted his ladies to a sleek steam-launch and placed them in the care of the pilot, his cousin Giorgio, for a longer, wetter, bumpier trip around the outside of Venice.

  Fortunately, the launch came equipped with a fully enclosed passenger cabin. The shivering young ladies sank onto velvet-padded bench seats, set their freezing feet onto the hob of the mid-floor radiator, and tried to find a rhythm in the jolting as the launch bucketed along the tide-churned lagoon. Partway home, the drizzle turned to sleet. When Maddie stepped out at the Hotel Gritti, her boot slipped on knobbly ice. She would have gone hem over headwear if not for the strong arms of two hotel footmen. What a horrid day!

  It ended better, though. As she came into her blessedly warm bedchamber, having left her damp cloak with the concierge for drying, a hawk tapped its beak on the window. Madame Taxus-Hemlock replying already? TD zipped from her hat to the sill and communed silently with the other bird. Then he flew back to Maddie’s shoulder.

  “Tweetle-D, speak to me,” she said, and the little bronze beak opened.

  “Madkin,” said Oberon O’Reilly’s voice. “I’m in Venice tonight with the crew of a private air yacht. Name your hotel and I’ll buy you supper at eight.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “AND I SIGNED on without a moment’s hesitation,” said Obie as he signalled for the pastry cart to end the sumptuous meal. “The earl will stay all through Carnevale, moored atop the English Consulate, unless the authorities make him move off for the nightly fireworks. Apart from standing my watches, I’m at your disposal to hunt for that schemer. I’ll find her, don’t you fret. And I’ll remind her just how much she owes you from New York. Too much to be taking your family name in vain, I’d say.”

  “Oh, Obie, I am so glad you’re here.” Maddie looked over the tempting array of desserts and finally settled on a hot chocolate crepe stuffed with warm mascarpone and topped with dark chocolate shavings, already beginning to melt from the heat. “What luck you chanced onto this Anglo-Irish lord heading for Carnevale. Does he have a costume already? If not, I’d recommend Madame Frangetti, on the Rio di Noale.”

  “A French Madame with an Italian surname? What’s that all about?” It was an idle question, Obie’s attention being fully upon the sumptuous selection of pastries, but Maddie answered it anyway.

  “As far as I can tell, that means her family came to Venice when Napoleon did, either as soldiers or merchants. She claims her French roots to make her fashion house stand out.” She paused to absorb a bite of oozing chocolate as Obie filled his plate with a wedge of almond torte and two fritelle zabaione, fried dumplings that resembled an English fritter but, she knew from previous experience, were filled with creamy custard. “These Venetians have long memories where the French are concerned. They practically spit whenever anything French is mentioned. The Napoleoni, as they call them, might have left last fall instead of nearly a century ago.”

  “Like the Irish about the English,” Obie agreed. “Except the English haven’t left yet. Half have gone native, like my earl, and the others treat us born Irish like potato-farming serfs.”
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  “This earl you work for, he’s one of the Anglo-Irish? How’d you get hired on with him?”

  “I was off home to see my ma and she’d heard he was looking for crew. It’s in the family, like; my granddad did a job or two for him. He may go off to the Far East after Carnevale. I’ve a mind to go along. No chance you could get to the far side of the world for your newspaper?”

  “Not likely.” Maddie licked the last chocolate off her fork. “I had enough trouble convincing CJ to pay for my stay here. I’m getting lots of column inches out of this chaperoning job with Serephene, though. And I might dig up enough on Sarah for a Knott story.”

  “I thought you two had declared neutrality last spring.”

  “That was before I learned she’s still known by my name here in Venice.”

  “Serephene and Sarah: both very ambitious. How do you keep them straight?”

  “Simple. Serephene has a teal heraldic streak in her hair, and a good heart. Sarah, as we both know well, is a scheming brunette who helps nobody but herself.”

  Obie wolfed down the last fritelle and dabbed the powdered sugar from his mouth with his napkin. “Well, that was a feast for a hard-working man. Care for a walk, or would it be raining again already?”

  “It’s almost always raining here,” said Maddie. “I thought it was going to snow today. It’s not unheard-of, apparently.”

  “I hope it doesn’t snow on Saturday.” Obie pulled a card from his breast pocket. “The British Consulate is throwing a party that night to watch the boat parade. Would you care to come? This pass will get you past the guards.”