The Hanged Man

by P. N. Elrod

  Alex remained with Lord Richard, the misery of the cold and her state of mind mitigated by hearing the reports as they arrived. In the lulls between, he questioned her about her travels around the world. She was certain he wasn’t simply passing the time, but more likely fleshing out whatever information he already possessed. He was skillful, making it seem like ordinary drawing-room conversation, exactly what was not to be found in a chilly landau next to a murder house at four in the morning. Alex suffered it, though. For all its shortcomings, she was committed to her duty. If the head of the Service wanted to know about her, so be it.

  * * *

  When Alex was ten, her father swooped in to remove her from her mother’s family. He and his wife had been estranged for a few years; Alex never knew why, though she suspected it was because the Fonteyns were manifestly unstable and given to drink. That’s what had happened to her mother. Alex barely remembered her. She was a dim face and a babbling voice, supplanted by a succession of nannies and aunts.

  Lord Gerard judged that none of the Fonteyns possessed the temperament suitable for raising a child and claimed his paternal rights. Later, Alex suspected a sum of money had changed hands to speed things and, given the mercenary nature of her maternal relatives, she was not particularly surprised.

  For the next five years father and daughter had journeyed around the world—twice. Though at times dangerous, it had been a marvelous series of adventures.

  Those came to an end one night in Hong Kong when an English messenger stopped at their house in Victoria, departing less than a half hour later. Though curious, Alex had not been privy to the conversation that had taken place between him and her father, but afterward she’d been told to pack. She was used to sudden departures, always traveling to a new place to learn new things. They’d been in China for nearly two years, though, and she’d not completed her studies with Master Shan.

  Father had not answered her questions, which was unusual, just told her to see to the packing—which included that of her paid traveling companion, the fearfully proper widow of a Methodist minister. Mrs. Falleson had been stranded in Hong Kong after the death of her husband and had lost her enthusiasm for converting the heathen. The lady was happy to chaperone Alex if it meant a trip back to England at some point.

  The last time Alex saw her father was on the steamship that would take her eastward across the Pacific. It was her second crossing, but this time she was bound for the United States, not Mazatlán, in Mexico. He saw to it that she and Mrs. Falleson were well accommodated and had more than sufficient funds and the means to get more, but never said exactly why they had to depart without him.

  “I’ve business to see to first, my dear,” was all he imparted to Alex on the topic. “Please do look after your companion. I fear she is no sailor.”

  He kissed Alex on the forehead, and then waved from the dock as the ship left the harbor. Alex kept him in sight for as long as possible, but eventually her tears and distance became too great and he was lost to view.

  She initially thought Father would catch up with them in San Francisco and that they would wait there, but Mrs. Falleson had strict orders to get to England as quickly as possible, which was in line with her own heart’s desire. Their choices were limited. The much-touted transcontinental rail line was yet incomplete. Mrs. Falleson refused to inflict a long, dusty stagecoach journey on herself and her charge, convinced they would be slaughtered by Indians or robbed by outlaws (and then slaughtered) at some point along the way. The contents of various newspapers validated her avoidance of that route.

  They could take a slow steamship around Cape Horn, make a dangerous land crossing of Mexico, or court death in the fever swamps of Panama. Alex had traversed Mexico on her first trip around the globe, but in a large, well-armed party. Her accounts of that journey were enough to send her chaperone on a hunt for smelling salts.

  Mrs. Falleson, after a number of prayers pointedly asking the Almighty for a solution, picked an unorthodox alternative that delighted Alex.

  The Americans were an enterprising lot when it came to commercial exploitation of their inventions, even the more terrifying ones. The San Francisco papers had been full of stories about the triumph of air travel. Mrs. Falleson read of the many successful flights achieved by the Aerial Navigation Company, particularly those executed under the command of a certain Captain Lucius Miracle, whose surname offered a strongly symbolic appeal to her spiritual side.

  Taking it as a sign from above, she and Alex boarded one of the lighter-than-air ships to skim (barely) over the Rocky Mountains and beyond. Though not the first females to make the trip, they were enough of a rarity that their participation was of interest to the newspapers. Mrs. Falleson was more horrified at having her name in a common rag than by defying gravity in a frail-looking gondola suspended beneath three balloons shaped like fat cigars.

  The ladies boarded swathed in veils and heavy coats, having been warned it would be cold, and at her request the captain of the ship gave false names to anyone who asked. Alex did not understand until her chaperone explained that a proper lady should only ever be mentioned thrice in a paper: when she was born, married, and died. Anything else was simply vulgar.

  Alex had heard stranger views expressed on her journeys and learned to discount them without offence to the speaker. A nod and a polite smile usually sufficed, and so it proved again.

  Their air transport was wanting in comfort, but peerless in speed. They rode the prevailing winds far above the wilder portions of territories claimed by the United States. For three days and nights Alex clung to the gunwales, gaping in wonder at the changing landscape below. Her eyes stung from the chill, her face hurt from smiling so much, and she grew hoarse asking countless questions of the crew and the captain. Mrs. Falleson prayed a great deal, only occasionally pausing in her orisons to admire the view. Alex tempted her often with that distraction, having the idea that God might appreciate the respite.

  Their airship landed in St. Louis amid fanfare that included a brass band and jugglers. Mrs. Falleson once more resorted to obscuring veils and managed to get them away unscathed and unidentified by the local press. She found a respectable hotel and there they rested for two days before boarding a slower if more sensible train for Chicago, another to New York, and finally a clipper ship back to a country Alex barely remembered.

  In London, the remarkable Mrs. Falleson tearfully delivered her charge to the Pendleburys and departed to seek out her own family, never to return. Though they did sometimes correspond, those occasional letters did not entirely mitigate Alex’s sense of having been dismissed again.

  Thus ended her second circumnavigation of the globe, which put her ahead of all the adults in the Pendlebury clan, most of whom had never stirred from England unless one counted occasional trips to Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

  It certainly put Alex ahead of the cousins of a like age to herself. She had nothing in common with them. What was normal to her was to them strange and worthy of ridicule. They teased her as a liar when the adults weren’t around and otherwise treated her like an exotic and not terribly safe zoo specimen. Cousin Andrina (who had often been to Balmoral as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice and her daughter, Princess Charlotte) informed her that Alex’s hiatus abroad was a disagreeable family scandal. It was on a level with Gerard marrying that unstable Fonteyn creature. Alex was told to keep both shames to herself and never mention her sordid history again.

  Alex considered Andrina to be a great fool, but this was cruel and unnecessary. Cousin Andrina was wonderfully resentful and unreasonably jealous that she and Alex shared the same name and royal godmother. It didn’t matter that the girls were two out of the hundreds of Alexandrina Victorias named after the queen, Andrina was always putting about that the honor was wasted on her odd cousin.

  Revenge for Alex, if not prudent, was imperative. Circumstances suggested a suitable retaliation. She poured out her cousin’s perfume and filled the bottle with gin. Andrina had
no sense of smell, owing to a childhood illness, and the next day departed for a lengthy visit to Balmoral reeking like a drunkard.

  There had been no repercussions since the prank could as easily been carried out by any of the other cousins—who were not talking. The only thing they abhorred more than Alex was a tattletale (and none them liked Andrina), so they closed ranks. Andrina, though, knew who was behind it, and from that point on ignored her cousin completely, thinking that a snub from a person of her social standing would completely crush her foe.

  Nothing could have had less impact on Alex, who was unaware that she was supposed to be miserable. It proved to be an imperfect but workable resolution to both girls. They found ways to avoid each other and not speak at the dinner table.

  Family disputes aside, Alex had written her father nearly every day, the first letters addressed to him in Hong Kong with “please forward” printed neatly on the envelope in English, French, and Chinese. She did not ask why she’d been sent away, reserving that question for the next time she would see him. She did inquire where he was and when he expected to be in England, then went on to describe the happenings of that particular day, certain that he would be interested as he’d always been.

  Her certainty wavered as the months crawled on without a reply, puzzlement gradually giving way to hurt, and then anger. No one knew where he was, not even Uncle Leo, and no one seemed inclined to find him, though Leo made inquiries. Nothing had come of them.

  A year after her return to England, a battered packet of unopened letters turned up, half a dozen out of the more than three hundred she’d sent. Someone had scrawled “return to sender” on the front in pencil and by some miracle it had found its way to her. It was not, so far as she could tell, her father’s handwriting. They were some of the earliest, on stationery acquired in San Francisco. She’d opened each, reading the events within, recalling forgotten details, but not relishing them as treasured memories. They mocked her then-belief that being sent away was only a temporary thing.

  Five years with Father, a total of twenty years without him, and now he was gone forever.

  * * *

  “It must have been quite an adventure,” stated Lord Richard.

  “Indeed, sir. The adventure of a lifetime.” She’d left out much from her account, and everything to do with her family. Childish feuds between cousins could hardly be of interest to him.

  “Beginning when you were only ten? There is the danger that ennui might overtake a person exposed so soon to such variety.”

  “I have thus far been spared.”

  Not strictly accurate. Alex loved traveling and it had been difficult adjusting to living a quiet, relatively predictable life. While Samuel Johnson’s declaration that when one tires of London, one tires of life might be true for some, he’d never ventured farther than the Hebrides.

  Besides, he’d not been plagued with a psychical ability for Reading or he’d have ended up in Bedlam.

  Some of her Fonteyn relatives had done so or been secreted away elsewhere for their own good. The psychical gifts that ran in their blood sometimes had a malignant effect, hence the family reputation for brilliance mated with instability. Had Father not gotten Alex a measure of special training early on, affording her control of her talent, she might well have gone down the same path.

  Mrs. Woodwake returned, climbing inside the landau to sit next to Alex. She nodded once in greeting, looking exhausted. “Pendlebury.”

  “Ma’am,” she said, and nodded back like a schoolgirl to a respected teacher. Woodwake had that effect on her. “Shall I leave, Lord Richard?”

  “No.” He looked at Woodwake. “Your report, if you please.”

  It was much as Alex expected. The emotional traces in the murder room were contaminated, so they would have to rely on the physical evidence. It was well there was a goodly amount, with more being gathered. On the roof, Inspector Lennon traced the intruder’s tracks to an empty house along the row that had been broken into; Woodwake inspected the premises, finding only faint echoes of its previous occupants.

  “You interviewed the servants?”

  “Yes. Innocent, so far as I am able to ascertain. They’re genuinely shaken, no one is hiding anything. They’ve no idea where Fingate’s gone, either.”

  He looked at Alex, who felt an uncomfortable prickling under her arms. She should tell him about the note. It was not too late. She could talk her way out of any serious disciplining. Knowing where Fingate was likely to be hours from now was different from not knowing where he was at present, though she doubted Lord Richard would appreciate the argument.

  Besides, it was now her turn to be questioned by a Reader. It was a foregone conclusion that Woodwake would sense a lie and any lie to cover the lie.

  “Sir, I—”

  Something struck the coach with a great deal of force, making a strange, flat percussive sound like a hammer on iron. Several more percussive somethings struck, shattering the glass window facing the street. The curtain twitched.

  Lord Richard flinched and grunted, then Alex felt the brute force of his hand on her shoulder. She and Woodwake were shoved down to the narrow confines of the coach’s floor with his lordship’s considerable weight on top.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Which Hokery-Pokery Is Judged to Be Useless

  Alex felt a wave of rage that was not her own and another of fear not her own, the first from Richard, the latter from Woodwake, before closing herself off from the onslaught.

  More things pelted the coach, tearing through the leather hood. She was certain they were bullets, but could not hear gunfire. The curtain and hoods were holed, the supporting hoopsticks splintered, but nothing penetrated below the sides. From the sound those were made of metal, not wood.

  She smelled blood and realized Lord Richard had been hit. She tried to shift, but he snarled at her to keep down.

  “I have my revolver, sir,” she said, her voice strained, given the fact she could hardly breathe. “In my coat pocket…”

  “Good for you; stay where you are. The driver is armed.”

  So it proved when the bark of a firearm put a stop to the hammering. The coach rocked as the man apparently quit his position on the bench.

  His pistol barked twice more and men shouted.

  The conveyance lurched forward. Once in motion it kept going, picking up speed, the horses’ strength overcoming the brake. She heard more shots as they rocked away unchecked. Alex had a horrible feeling—this time, entirely her own—that matters were about to get worse. She pushed and squirmed, Richard ordering her to keep still, Woodwake getting in the way. Whatever was being used in the attack was directed at one side only, so she’d be safe enough. She hoped.

  Alex wriggled her torso clear, kicking his lordship in the process, to judge by his curse, and pushed the door open. The sidewalk was on the move, or so it seemed from her vantage on the floor. The alarmed horses were trotting away from the uproar. Alex undid the buttons on her ulster and struggled to shed it.

  “Get down!” Richard ordered and caught her by the back of her collar—the coat’s collar, which was a bit of luck. He pulled, she pulled, and she was suddenly free. Her revolver was still in the pocket, but she had no time for shooting. She turned to face the interior and backed out the door, holding tight to the leather roof as they swayed along. The hoopsticks supporting it on this side were still intact and held her weight for an instant as she swung her right leg up. Her foot landed on a horizontal spot, then skidded awkwardly into the skeleton boot under the driver’s bench. It gave her leverage. She boosted over and made a successful grab at the seat irons, then pulled herself onto the bench to pick up the reins.

  Her instinct was to stop, but a bullet—or whatever it was—whipped by her ear like an angry bee. Men were giving chase or attempting to; the sleety glaze on the paving made it hazardous for attackers and defenders alike.

  She released the brake, gave the reins a smart snap, and yelled at the horses. The animals
plunged ahead. She sent up an incoherent prayer that neither of them broke a leg.

  The slippery road was clear of traffic at this hour on Christmas morning. She risked a glance back, but darkness, their movement, and distance kept her from seeing anything. Best to assume the worst. Lord Richard shouted, but she ignored him and kept going. They passed Devonshire Street and were approaching Weymouth before she looked back again. No one seemed to be immediately behind.

  Fortunately the horses were inclined to respond when she pulled on the reins, and slowed to the point where she could make a turn without tipping the landau. She went right, then right again, doubling north on Marylebone High Street. His lordship was cursing loudly enough that she could make out words even over the rumbling wheels and the ring of horseshoes. She urged the horses left onto Paddington with the idea of getting to Baker Street and a doctor. Harley Street was chock-a-block with physicians, but too warm a climate for the moment.

  Warm? She was freezing up here. The sleet stung her face, clung to her lashes, and the cold wind hurt her teeth because she was grinning. Nothing to do with mirth, though her short huffing breaths might be mistaken for laughter rather than a reaction to nearly getting killed. She could still hear the heavy tearing sound of that missile passing her by a quarter inch. What could do that? A bullet crossbow? No, not enough velocity for the distance, but close. Ah, of course, it would have to be—

  “Pendlebury, stop this damned thing at once!” Lord Richard’s anger intruded on her deductions. She grimaced.

  “Almost there, sir,” she shouted back.

  “Where?” he roared.

  Paddington intersected with Baker Street. She eased the horses into the turning. They trotted smartly, heads tossing and bits jingling, apparently ready for another mad dash. She brought them to a stop, set the brake, and clambered down. Lord Richard was already out of the coach, glaring at her. Mrs. Woodwake crept out more slowly, looking rumpled and somewhat wild-eyed. More alarmingly, her clothing was bloodstained.