Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage

by Jayne Barnard

  Still reeling from that fearsome suspicion, she realized she must face Mr. G-G and Reggie Badmin with not a clue what Lord Main-Bearing had told them about the night’s doings. Had he said Miss Hatter roused him? Most unlikely. They would think it most improper of a young lady to visit his chamber, and of course he wouldn’t explain they were related. Perhaps Emmeline knew. Maddie flung open the door and headed for her friend’s bedchamber.

  She was halfway across the hall when Mr. Gnave caught up to her. “Miss Hatter,” he exclaimed. “You are to come down at once. Mr. Fawkes’ man is waiting to take you to his superior.”

  “I’ll just say good morning to Miss Emmeline.” Maddie turned away.

  Gnave had the gall to grip her by the elbow and swing her toward the stairs. “Now, Miss Hatter.”

  “Let me go at once.”

  “Only if you come down peaceably with me. I will not risk my position by disobeying an order.” When she reluctantly nodded, he released her arm. “After you.”

  Conscious of his fixed gaze behind her, and much concerned about why she was being hustled off to face Mr. Fawkes, Maddie made her way slowly to the wide stairs. At the bottom waited a man whose dark head was sleeked back with hair oil so obnoxious that she sneezed before she was halfway down the flight. This must be the odious Reggie Badmin. She forced a calm smile as she reached the last step.

  “Good morning. Mr. Badmin, I presume?”

  The fellow guzzled a glass of what appeared to be chocolate milk before he deigned to answer. He handed the glass off to Woodrow.

  “You got that right, sister. Come along now. My boss is waiting, and he don’t like to be kept waiting.” He grabbed the elbow Mr. Gnave had already squeezed.

  Maddie yanked it back. “Keep your hands off me, sir.”

  “Better me than the coppers, lady. The car’s waiting. You there, open the door.”

  Woodrow stiffened. For half a moment Maddie thought he might refuse, but his training triumphed. He made his rigid progress toward the door, passing off the milk-streaked glass to the footman. Door opened, he stood to one side, very correctly, and appeared not to see Maddie at all as she was led away by Reggie Badmin, still wearing his self-satisfied smirk.

  Settling herself in the rear of the rocket-car, she asked. “Why does Mr. Fawkes wish to see me urgently? I did not see whoever was in the study last night.”

  “What, no mirrors in there?” Badmin laughed at her shocked expression. “You’re the newest employee. They never had no trouble in the house till you signed on. And your maid said you didn’t touch the drugged chocolate. Shoulda swallowed some for an alibi, sister, when you were finished your midnight raid.”

  “But I didn’t—surely Lord Main-Bearing—I . . .” Maddie stammered to a stop. Father had not told them.

  “Lord Main-Bearing?” Reggie sneered. “Did you think you’d charmed that poker-backed Brit into covering for you? Well, he didn’t say he’d seen you. But he didn’t say he didn’t either. Mr. Fawkes is mighty suspicious of omissions like that.”

  While Reggie made ever more egregious suggestions about what she might have done to persuade Lord Main-Bearing to silence, Maddie seethed behind gritted teeth until they drew up before a tall brownstone house. An ostentatious brass plaque by the door was embossed with the head of a fox and the words “S. Fawkes, Consulting Detective.” The coming interview promised to be as tricky as any she had ever known, and she mounted the front steps with mingled resolve and dread.

  Reggie didn’t take his eyes off her long enough to open the front door. Instead, he stood behind her, reached past to tug on the bell-pull, and then waited, so close she could feel his breath on her neck. A white-coated manservant admitted them.

  “Straight to the office, Fudd,” he ordered. “She’s expected.”

  Following the manservant’s billiard-ball head along a panelled hall, Maddie wondered if Sneero Fawkes, self-proclaimed America’s Greatest Detective, would be as self-focused and self-indulgent as Britain’s self-proclaimed Greatest Detective, Hercule Hornblower. If she found him preening before a mirror, like the first time she’d seen Hornblower, she would not be easily cowed into telling him anything. She lifted her chin and marched on into the office.

  Mr. Fawkes was as unlike Hornblower as any man could be. He was almost skeletally thin, bare-faced in defiance of the fashion for whiskers, and had reddish, fluffy hair above a pointed nose that recalled the animal his name resembled. He leaned back in an outsized chair behind an outsized desk, his face in a paperback with a lurid cover. He did not rise when she entered but continued reading, lips pursed and face expressionless, while she and Reggie stood before the desk like schoolchildren facing the headmaster.

  After a time he said, not looking up, “Away with you, Badmin.”

  “But, boss!”

  “I wanted the girl, you brought the girl. Be gone. You cannot have thoroughly questioned all the servants yet.” Reggie’s shoulders drooped. Maddie turned to watch him slouch out the door. When she looked back at the desk, Sneero Fawkes was watching her. “Close the door, Reggie,” he called, and then, to her, said quite politely, “Please, take a seat, Miss Hatter. May I offer you coffee? Tea? Chocolate milk?”

  “Nothing, thank you.” Maddie took the nearest chair and folded her hands on her lap. “What do you wish from me?”

  “Straight to the point. I like that.” Fawkes leaned back in his immense chair, quite wide enough for three of him, and folded his own hands over his flat stomach. “You have been resident at the Gatsby-Gauge mansion for how long now? A week?”

  “Not quite.”

  “And your duties there consist of?”

  “As Miss Gatsby-Gauge’s social secretary, I accompany her to events as she requires, and instruct her in matters of European etiquette in preparation for her trip abroad next year. When requested, I also assist her mother.”

  Mr. Fawkes’ voice remained mild. “Yet you have no discoverable employment history as a social, or any style, secretary.”

  “I have only been in New York City a short while.”

  “You have no secretarial history in any English or European city that I could discover through contacts abroad. At least, not under that name.”

  The implications were clear: he had been looking into “Maddie Hatter” for some time—likely since her visit to the factory—and he thought her name as false as her job description. The investigative boot was on someone else’s foot and she found she did not like that at all. More so since she had no defence against his suspicions save by betraying Emmeline’s confidence. Saying she was a reporter would further raise suspicion about her motives for invading the Gatsby-Gauge milieu. She chose to say nothing at all.

  “You are skilled at keeping your secrets,” he said. “It will not avail you long. Tell me, Miss Hatter, where is your clockwork bird today?”

  Her eyes opened wide. She blinked them quickly, hoping to disguise her surprise. What did he know of TD?

  Something wolfish grew in Mr. Fawkes’ smile. “Reggie may be a buffoon, and crass with it, but he has a very particular kind of memory, one most useful in my line of work. He described the sparrow on your hat exactly, after he followed you to the Statue of Liberty.”

  How had he followed them unseen? Between Obie, Hiram, and the urchins, surely someone would have noticed. If he had remained undetected, then anyone else might have also. Perhaps his presence had deterred the kidnappers then, but now Emmeline was unprotected, in a house where someone had drugged the inhabitants just last night. Maddie must get this interview over with, convince Mr. Fawkes she was not after the gauge, and get back to the mansion. But what could she say? She looked politely back at Mr. Fawkes, and waited for his next shocker.

  Mr. Fawkes’ smile widened. “Dare I suggest that you received the bird from a member of a certain consortium based in Germany? Possibly from a woman known the length of Europe as a professor of applied botany?” He regarded her closely. “I must wonder if you inserted yourself int
o the Gatsby-Gauge house deliberately, as a spy for that lady’s German consortium.”

  “No.” The word was out before Maddie could bite her lip.

  “No, you did not get your bird from Madame Taxus-Hemlock? Or no, you are not spying for her family business?”

  He had named Madame. There was, once more, no answer Maddie could give that would not lead to further probing questions. She sat, eyes on her hands, and felt a brief kinship with Reggie. If not for her rigorous training in deportment, she too would slouch, in tacit admission of defeat. But she was not Reggie, she reminded herself, and not employed by this slim, quiet, supremely confident man. She was the Honourable Madeleine Main-Bearing, only daughter of Britain’s Third Steamlord, and an accomplished interviewer in her own right.

  “Enough of your questions, Mr. Fawkes. I have a few of my own.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Oh, well played, Miss Hatter. I do believe you are my old friend’s latest protégé. The Empress’s Kiss is a dead—and deadly—giveaway, what poker players would call a ‘tell’. Ask me a question.”

  Maddie didn’t waste time wondering how he knew about her parasol duel. “I’ve made inquiries into all the visiting Steamlords and their secretaries to the best of my ability in the short time at my disposal. You, with longer access to their names and greater resources here than I possess, might have uncovered something, shall we say, less than upstanding about one of them. Or more than one.” She left the question implied and sat back to await his reply, hoping the first words out of his mouth wouldn’t be a condemnation of her father’s business ethics.

  Mr. Fawkes regarded her with open interest. “Your inquiries appear to march with mine. Very well. Coggington’s an open book. His grandfather was a scoundrel, reputedly reformed by the love of a good woman. He’d bought her house for a song and then, struck by repentance for taking advantage of her widowed penury, he married her that she might continue in her home. The latter part of his life inclined more to good works than to profiteering. His son and grandson have been models of upstanding American acumen, open-handed to the deserving and without a single questionable deal to sully their reputations. Coggington’s New York offices are staffed with long-time employees whose loyalty has been repeatedly tested and found steadfast.”

  Ulysses Cray Coggington was not a modern-day carpetbagger, then. Emmeline would never believe it. Maddie said, with a false calm that she feared was entirely too transparent, “And the British one?”

  Mr. Fawkes recited, as from a peerage tome, Lord Main-Bearing’s many titles, estates, and honours, finishing with, “And he’s an intimate of the Admiralty, the Cabinet, and Her Majesty’s inner circle.”

  “Anyone may bow and bend to royalty, and be a villain. What about his business reputation? Anything shady? Any scandals or rumours?”

  “There was something a few years ago.” Fawkes steepled his fingers and peered over them. “His daughter vanished from a ball in her honour. For a time it was feared she had been kidnapped by the Russians, to pressure him into sharing Admiralty secrets. The British Secret Service investigated intently, found no evidence he had been approached, and quietly dropped the case. Rumour was that one of the Queen’s multitude of relations saw the girl alive and well, living on the Continent under an assumed name. A love affair unwelcome to the family, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.” So that was what they’d said at home about her disappearance. How very uncomfortable those months must have been for her father, being followed and forced to answer for his every action and meeting. She had never expected his reputation to suffer following her precipitous departure. But then she had been, at eighteen, quite naïve about business, politics, and indeed anything beyond her sheltered sphere of dancing, deportment, and dresses. If she had not fallen in with Madame almost immediately, Life might have handed her some very hard lessons. Small wonder, then, that Father had been so very angry when she, with Madame’s forceful support, had at last informed her family she was alive, unharmed, and refusing to return home.

  She set all that aside to ask about the last Steamlord. “The German? Herr Mittwoch-Uhrwerk?”

  “Blameless and boring. Although . . .” Mr. Fawkes paused, eyeing her with his head to one side like a curious fox. “Have you by chance found anything interesting about his household?” He’d answered her questions and was due a return of information.

  She gave it to him. “The secretary, Herr Gehirn, is probably spying on his master for a rival firm back in Germany. I expect he’d find it easier to copy the gauge once its plans are in Europe than to attempt anything here, where he lacks trusted associates.”

  Fawkes nodded. “He has none we know of, at any rate. Reggie trailed him for three days before they went off to California, and he led an entirely blameless existence. As did Pennwiper, by whose name you will already have gathered the lad’s a Quaker. Virtuous, hardworking, and ambitious, an uneasy combination for him but not, I think, a risk for industrial espionage. For that is what we are discussing, is it not? We both believe someone is after the gauge.”

  “We do.” Maddie sat quietly, relieved that the great detective had left off questioning her identity or her connection to Madame Taxus-Hemlock. “Are you familiar with a Russian, Countess Olga Romanova?”

  His lips thinned. “I am. She’s a menace in diplomatic disguise, living in an apartment maintained by the Russian Embassy. Have you crossed paths before?”

  “Two years ago, we travelled on the same airship for a few weeks. Madame Taxus-Hemlock was also a passenger, and my employer at the time. The countess tried to coerce top-secret information from a crew member.” And arranged other intrigues after she was firmly set ashore, including Maddie’s yellow roses with their spy-spiders.

  “Ah, that would account for it. Madame and the countess have crossed parasols in the past.” Fawkes gave a wry smile. “The Empress’s Kiss has a longer reach than you could have anticipated. What a pity you could not find another way out of that duel.”

  “That’s twice you’ve mentioned the duel. Was I followed into the parasol academy that day?”

  “Reggie made inquiries after the fact. Your skill was on all the ladies’ lips. I take it you are capable of safeguarding Miss Gatsby-Gauge should she become a target?”

  “I am. And I must return to the house.” Maddie stood, shaking out her skirt. “If the individual who drugged the hot chocolate is someone in residence—and it was not me, I assure you—then she may be in danger even now.”

  “Unlikely, in daylight, surrounded by people,” said Fawkes, but he rose too, and accompanied her to the front door. To her surprise, the rocket car waited. Reggie must have sent it back, an unlooked-for courtesy. Bryson hurried around to open the passenger hatch. Fawkes handed her inside. At the last moment, he leaned in and added, “When next you see dear Madame, tell her from me that Fudd still can’t cook.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WOODROW HELD THE mansion’s front door for Maddie with more expression than usual on his long, butlerish face. What exactly the expression indicated she could not be sure, but consternation over the night’s events was part of it, as well annoyance at the upset to the staff’s routines, and also, just possibly, relief that she, personally, had not been arrested for tampering with the cocoa. Behind him stood Emmeline, her amber curls drooping and her face wan above a pale primrose day dress. She rushed forward as best the narrow skirt and binding flounces would allow.

  “Oh, Maddie, I was so afraid for you.” Heedless of crushing her starched-lace ruffles or knocking off Maddie’s hat, she threw her arms around her friend. Deeply fatigued after two disturbed nights in a row, Maddie leaned into the embrace, resting her head on Emmeline’s shoulder for one weary moment while Woodrow retrieved the hat and Emmeline filled her in on the situation in the mansion.

  “Father and the Steamlords are in his study, having a furious discussion about his security measures. He had to show them all where the gauge vanishes to at night, in order to calm their
concern that its design has already been compromised. Now they all know. Any one of them could steal it!”

  At that Maddie forced herself upright. These were matters that should not be discussed before the maid she could see sweeping out the parlour hearth, or the footman who was crossing behind Emmeline with a tray of silver for the dining room.

  “Come upstairs,” she told her friend. “Woodrow, might we have coffee sent up to Miss Emmeline’s room?”

  “I will see to it at once, Miss.” He hesitated. “And may I say, Miss, it’s a pleasure to have you with us again.”

  “Thank you.” Maddie smiled at him and went off, arm in arm with Emmeline. Once again, no chance to retrieve TD from the study. His little bird brain would be overloaded with images. What a pity she had not told him to record conversations as well. Personalities and hidden motives were often revealed when tempers were roused.

  They’d barely settled into Emmeline’s pretty suite, soothed by the pale green watered silk walls painted with magnolias, when their coffee arrived. Woodrow himself brought it.

  “You need not fear anyone has tampered with your beverage. I supervised every step of its preparation myself.”

  “You have done well,” Maddie assured him. “Now I must ask, away from the lower staff, if you have any idea who could have drugged the cocoa last night? Surely not one of your people?”

  He did not, as she’d half expected, poker up at the question, but said gravely, “I have given the matter considerable thought. It seems likely the, er, substance was introduced to the pot while it was warming on the stove. The flasks were filled by the cook during the dessert service. Most under-servants were engaged in clearing up the supper dishes. The laundry-maids and boot boy were already off to bed, seeing as they rise earliest. The ladies’ maids took their tea and fashion magazines in the servants’ lounge. They did not return to the kitchens after our evening meal, nor did the valets, who were playing cards in the servants’ dining room.”