On a Night Black

by Cherie Mitchell

  “Jack Ripley…” Elliot stared at her in astonishment. That name could only belong to one person. “Do you mean the Knave?”

  “Yes. The man you know as the Knave or simply Jack was born as Jack Ripley. As far as I know, he still uses the name on occasion.”

  “You were his foster mother?”

  She nodded, watching him closely as he allowed her words to sink in. “I was a neighbour of his family and I acted as a foster mother of sorts. His biological father died before he was born and his mother viewed him as just another burden and an unwanted mouth to feed. Unfortunately, his childhood was far from pleasant. He was beaten mercilessly by his mother and older sisters and forced to fend for himself a lot of the time.”

  While Elliot was unable to raise any sympathy for the man, he could imagine that Amy would have a field day with this information. If she were here, she would be on the edge of her seat right now, eager to ask Hortense more about the Knave’s early life.

  “This early neglect had a profound effect on Jack and in no small way contributed to the evil man he would one day become. Please note that I’m not trying to make excuses for him but I do want to point out that his upbringing badly affected his mental state and ignited a deep hatred for women in general.” She shook her head sadly. “Where other more normal people have emotions and a sense of empathy for their fellow humans regardless of their gender or status in life, the Knave has only a void.”

  Elliot suddenly knew who Hortense reminded him of. She was a lot like Louise, the older woman who the Knave met at a wine bar before stalking through the streets of modern London, in both her manner and her appearance. He remembered he’d been told that the Knave had noticed the same similarities between Louise and his foster mother. “Does the Knave know you’re here?”

  Darcy swiftly re-joined the conversation. “He doesn’t know and he doesn’t need to know. Aside from all that, Hortense would like to take you back with her to the time of Jack’s childhood. She believes it will give you a deeper understanding of the man you’re dealing with.”

  Elliot pulled a face. “To be honest, I don’t think I care about how hard his childhood was. There are plenty of people who have a rough start to life yet they don’t go on to murder innocents.”

  “Humour me,” Hortense coaxed. “I loved him once as a mother loves her own child. I’d like you to see a part of that.”

  “What happened between you and him? Was there a falling out? You’re obviously a sensible and patient woman. I would’ve thought that if the bond between you was strong enough, he would’ve continued to see you as his confidant and supportive advisor.”

  A small spasm of pain crossed her face. “I had to move away,” she explained. “Jack saw my departure as yet another rejection by one of the most important women in his life. He talked himself into believing I’d abandoned him just when he needed me the most.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “Not in person. I’ve followed the story of his life with great sadness but we haven’t met again.”

  “Do you want to see him?” Elliot could only imagine the weight of responsibility that Hortense must carry over Jack’s choice of a life of crime, violence, and murder, even though it was obviously not her fault.

  Hortense swallowed hard. “Not particularly,” she said softly. “He is no longer the Jack Ripley I once knew. It’s impossible for me to understand how the Knave’s conscience allows him to do what he does.”

  Elliot nodded. “I’m not going to argue with that. Ok, I’m take a jaunt back there with you if you think it will help.” He gave Darcy a weighted look. “As long as the time machine behaves itself.”

  Darcy beamed. “Marvellous. I just need the machine to have a short test run and everything will be perfect.”

  Elliot now wished he hadn’t been so quick to agree to go. “Test run? Does that mean you’re unsure of its worthiness? Hortense and I aren’t going to end up back in the lunatic asylum are we?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” Darcy pushed himself out of the chair and swept across the room to yank the door open. “Come through now and we’ll get you both ready for your little adventure.”

  Elliot was more than ready to back pedal. “You said you couldn’t guarantee anything anymore. You said those exact words.”

  “Everything is fixed well enough. We’re all fine and dandy. Come along.” He certainly sounded confident but Elliot had witnessed the doubtful outcome of Darcy’s confidence several times before now.

  “How long are we going for? Where will we stay?” He looked at Hortense, who had followed them out of the room, but she seemed unconcerned as she adjusted her shawl and patted her hair.

  “You’re only going for an hour or two. This trip is an excursion rather than an overnighter and you won’t be fiddling with anything while you’re there. Think of it as an observational jaunt.” Darcy stepped into his front room and into a fug of fuel fumes. “Hortense, you’re the smaller of the pair of you. You can ride in the sidecar.” Darcy gave the capsule a ringing slap with the palm of his hand.

  “Gee, thanks.” Hortense eyed the sidecar dubiously. “Is it safe? I remember the last time…”

  “Perfectly safe,” Darcy said hastily. “Elliot has only recently used it and he can vouch for its safety and security.”

  Elliot was now in no hurry to climb back inside the device. Darcy’s faith in his invention was not at all reassuring. “Explain to me exactly what you need us to do. I don’t want to end up trapped in some random year with no way to get back. I don’t have any clue how to drive this thing.”

  “You’ll arrive at the appointed place, take a quick look-see around Jack Ripley’s old haunts, and then you’ll come straight back. Hortense knows what to do and the dashboard is pre-programmed.” Darcy adjusted his spectacles and pulled at a lever.

  Elliot stepped back in alarm as the time machine emitted a disturbing hissing noise, accompanied by a smelly, belching cloud of black smoke.

  “Bother.” Darcy poked helplessly at the dashboard, where several red lights were now blinking erratically on and off. “We seem to have developed another small glitch. Give me an hour or two and I’ll have it ready to go.”

  “Oh, Darcy.” Hortense shook her head at Elliot behind the inventor’s back, her elegant eyebrows pulled into a frown and her mouth pursed. “Of course this had to happen just when I had myself all psyched up for the journey. I’m going to my room to read. Call me when you’re ready.”

  She flounced out of the room, the fringe of her shawl flying behind. Darcy gave Elliot a rueful grin. “Sorry about this, old chap. You may as well go and find something else to do and I’ll give you a shout out when it’s time to go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Elliot had tried to connect via the Com-Dec app to Ramona’s computer for the past hour but it failed to link each time, although once he thought the screen might have come close to stuttering into life. He could now understand Ramona’s frustration with the corporation’s communication system a little better. She’d been battling with these rough and unreliable connections for a lot longer than he had. He was disappointed not to have reached her and vaguely angry that she was there and he was here, with no way for them to get in touch.

  He hooked the tablet to the portable charger and left the battery to recharge. He felt at a loose end now, out of sorts and left twiddling his thumbs while they waited for Darcy to fix the latest blip in the infinity device. And yes, he was nervous about travelling back in time with Hortense. He could think of nothing worse than finding himself trapped in an era even less automated and more uncomfortable than this one.

  He got up from where he’d been sitting on the bed and wandered moodily over to the window. The sun was trying to break through the clouds but otherwise the outlook was bleak and misty grey. Hardly conducive to improving his mood. He tipped his head, listening as Big Ben chimed the hour in the distance. Soon he would be spinning past time itself, heading back to a year befor
e his own year of birth in machine already prone to glitches. The thought was terrifying.

  He sat on the bed again and picked up his mobile phone to click into his photo gallery. He smiled at the photo of Annie, enchanted by her round-eyed stare into the press photographer’s camera. He would soon journey to a time before she was born. Imagine if he could rush back to the day before she died and whisk her away, just as Darcy had done for Hortense…

  “Elliot?” Hortense knocked lightly on the outside of the door. “Do you mind if I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  He jumped up and opened the door, pleased that she’d pulled him away from his sombre thoughts. “Of course I don’t mind.” He hesitated and glanced at the bed, well aware that it would never do for a gentleman to invite a single lady into his room. “Perhaps we should go down to the parlour.”

  “Perfect.” She tripped lightly down the stairs ahead of him and walked into the blue and brown parlour. The room was warm, with the remains of a small fire glowing in the grate, and cheerful despite the muted, gloomy light cast from the window. The faint smell of well-brewed tea hung in the air and an empty teacup sat on the small table. Hortense arranged herself neatly on a chair and waited for him to sit down in his favoured horsehair armchair.

  “I was trying to connect with Ramona in 2020 using the Com-Dec app,” he said conversationally. “But unfortunately I couldn’t get through. It doesn’t work all that well.”

  “Wait until 2086, when telepathy is more widely accepted and utilised. Those sorts of apps will be obsolete then.”

  “Have you been there? To 2086?” This shouldn’t have surprised him. If Hortense and Darcy were as close as they appeared to be, it made sense that she would’ve accompanied him to plenty of different times and places. The flimsy sidecar had probably been deployed many times.

  “Once or twice.” She brushed it off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Ramona will be sorry to have missed you.”

  “Or annoyed. She was never a fan of the communication system to begin with.”

  “You’re fond of her, aren’t you?” Hortense asked, her voice genial and inviting confidences as she settled herself back against the chair. The grey light from the window formed a feathery, silvery halo around her head and she looked almost angelic sitting there like that, making him feel comfortable enough to speak to her honestly.

  “I do like her. I like her a lot. She intrigues me and makes me want to know more about her. She keeps her cards close to her chest but when she opens up, it’s like the sun has come out.”

  “Your face changes when you talk about her.”

  Elliot quickly dropped his eyes. He wasn’t aware he was so transparent but Amy and now Hortense had noticed the same nuances in his expression. He felt strangely guilty, as if he’d been caught out doing something he shouldn’t.

  “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.” Hortense lapsed into silence and for a short while, the only sound in the room was the gentle crackle and snap of the fire.

  Elliot was about to speak, to say something about their upcoming journey and steer the conversation away from the delicate matter of his feelings for Ramona, but Hortense beat him to it. “She’s in a difficult position.”

  For an instant, he thought Hortense meant that Ramona was in a difficult position because he’d developed feelings for her. His hackles rose immediately and he was about to wade into an argument about why he wasn’t such a bad catch. Seconds later, he was glad that he hadn’t.

  “As the only daughter of a senior member of the corporation, she has a lot to live up to. Ramona takes her responsibilities seriously.”

  “I know she takes her responsibilities seriously. She doesn’t allow herself to relax enough, to laugh and just enjoy being. I want to be the one to change that.”

  Hortense smiled but it was difficult to see the expression in her eyes with the light from the window shining behind her. “Courageous words.”

  “I don’t see them as courageous. Courage means forcing yourself to do something that you don’t really want to do and I want to make Ramona sparkle and laugh.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. Your courage is in thinking that you can change her at all.” Hortense sighed and pulled her shawl in close, despite the warmth of the room. “Change is hard for all of us and like many other people Ramona has not lived the easiest of lives.”

  “She hasn’t?” Elliot sat forward in his chair, eager to hear more. He knew next to nothing about Ramona’s past and up until now, everyone had avoided telling him.

  “Due to her family circumstances, she became involved with the corporation at a young age. I don’t know how much you know about the corporation…”

  “I know scarcely anything,” he interrupted her to say. “To me, it’s a mysterious group with hidden and apparently far-reaching powers.”

  Hortense gave a light, musical laugh. The clouds outside had cleared for now and a sunbeam had found its way to the window, enhancing the illusion of a halo around her head. “You’ve managed to make it sound a lot more exciting than it actually is. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s basically a huge company with lots of departments, thousands of employees, and far too many rules and regulations.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Ramona and I have discussed her situation and the ways of the corporation at length. I like to think that she sees me as a mentor of sorts, although I might be flattering myself with that idea.”

  If he wasn’t confused before, he definitely was now after that unexpected statement. “I don’t understand how you could’ve spent time with Ramona when she is in the future and you yourself are supposed to be dead. Yes, I’ve jumped forward and we’ll both soon be jumping back, but I was never dead to begin with. You can’t constantly trick time like that.”

  “Ah, but you can. It only gets trickier if you think about it too hard. Firstly, you have to let the concept of time as a straight line go, otherwise you’ll end up in a hopeless, muddled mess. Time is and always has been a fabricated concept, a synthetic attempt by man to control natural cycles. Imagine time as a fluid matter instead. Have you ever seen a bead of mercury?”

  He was trying to work out how she’d managed to detour from talking about the impossibility of time to asking if he’d ever seen a bead of mercury but she continued speaking without waiting for his response. “A bead of mercury is an uncatchable thing, a wild and merry bubble of silver that refuses capture or restriction. The fluidity of quicksilver is a joy to behold. Imagine time as a free and flowing stream or a joyous breeze and you’ll be closer to the truth of what it really is.”

  He’d just opened his mouth to reply when an enormous explosion rocked the house, rattling the windowpanes, shaking the floorboards, and sending a few tiny particles of plaster hurtling down from the ceiling above. Hortense whimpered and clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock.

  Elliot was on his feet in an instant, his boots hitting the floor with a thump before his mind had time to engage and slot into a new and unexpected change of gear. “What in the devil’s name was that?!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  The blackened, sooty figure who had just uttered those words allowed Elliot to help him up off the floor. The only way Elliot could tell this apparition was Darcy was by the tiny tuft of unblemished white hair over his left ear.

  “Darcy, what happened? Are you alright?” Hortense hovered by the inventor’s side, her hands fluttering helplessly. “Are you hurt?”

  “Dratted capacitator.”

  “Incapacitated, more like it.” Elliot surveyed the mess of the time machine, parts of which were now strewn right across the table and floor. “I know you said it’s not as bad as it looks, but I can’t say I agree.”

  “It’s just a few loose screws.” Darcy pulled off his sooty spectacles to reveal a comical black face with a white circle around each eye. “I’ll have it ticking along in no time
but your little jaunt back to the Knave’s beginnings might be on the backburner for a while.”

  A wave of relief surged through Elliot. “That’s a shame,” he said offhandedly. He rescued one of the sidecar’s leather belts from where it hung from Darcy’s shoulder.

  “When will the device be operable again?” Hortense had pulled a scrap of lace handkerchief from her sleeve and was now dabbing uselessly at the mess of grime that covered Darcy.

  “I might need a few hours. Hard to say.” Darcy irritably batted the dabbing handkerchief away. “Don’t fuss, woman. It’s just a little soot.”

  “I think you’re dealing with more than a few loose screws and a sprinkle of soot.” Elliot stooped to pick up an array of screws, bolts, cogs, and random tiny pieces off the floor. “Darcy, are you sure you can get this working again?”

  “Where’s my screwdriver? I had it just a minute ago.” Darcy ignored Elliot’s question as he peered around the room looking for the tool.

  “Here.” Elliot strode across the room to pull the screwdriver out of the wall, where it had imbedded itself in the plaster beneath one of Darcy’s many diagrams and maps. He handed it to the inventor and exchanged a worried glance with Hortense.

  “Ah.” Darcy gave him a toothy grin, his teeth very white against his dark face, before bending over the soot covered machine.

  “I know you’ve already got enough on your plate but you should probably know that I couldn’t connect with Ramona with the Com-Dec app. I tried for nearly an hour.”

  “That’s because I was using it.” Darcy sighed and reluctantly laid screwdriver down on the table. “There have been a few problems, much more than we ever anticipated.”

  “From what I can see, there have been nothing but problems from the beginning. What is it this time?” Elliot’s burst of relief had not last long. Now he was feeling distinctly uneasy. He had no doubt that he wasn’t going to like what Darcy was about to say.