The Underwater Ballroom Society

by Y. S. Lee

  “But the witnesses, Simpson. The alibi.”

  “That is where Miss Wright was very clever. If you would allow me? Reverend Asheville. Could I ask a favor?”

  The reverend nodded.

  “Can you whistle?”

  Reverend Asheville looked awkwardly around. “Not well.”

  “Not well is perfect. Please would you whistle Voi Che Sapete, the aria for which Emily was famous?”

  The reverend cleared his throat, then started to whistle. He was right, Harriet thought. He was not good. Not good at all. But Harriet didn’t have time to listen to him mangle the tune. Half-a-dozen notes in, the automatic servant lurched into motion, heading at speed toward the reverend, arms raised. The reverend squawked.

  “Command: stop,” Bertrand said loudly. The automatic servant came to an abrupt halt.

  “I found this automatic servant stationed on the balcony from which Mr. Strachan was pushed. You, Emily, lost your job and your career because Mr. Strachan wanted to do a favor for the maid he was trying to impress. When he came to work here and you heard him whistling your aria, you snapped. I searched your room, and I found these.”

  He reached into the box and pulled out a set of small tools.

  “Your father was an assistant to a mechanician in Tharsis City. You were able to pick up the skills necessary to program an automatic servant and these tools would give access to its workings. You had the motive and the means to kill Mr. Strachan, and you were clever enough to arrange an alibi, but I have you.”

  There was silence in the room. Then Emily’s face twisted. “You don’t understand! He ruined my life. He destroyed everything I worked for. And then when he realized who I was, he started whistling that blasted tune to mock me! What would you have done?”

  “I would not have killed him.”

  Harriet stood frozen. She felt like she’d been hit over the back of her head. She was surprised she could still stand upright. Bertrand had done it. He had solved the case, all on his own. Everything she had assumed, everything she had thought she knew, was wrong. The murder had nothing to do with the smuggling gang or the package. And that meant that the people who had attacked her and were after the package were also nothing to do with the murder. The suspects in front of her were unrelated to her mission. Her real attackers could be anyone in the hotel. She was back to where she had started. Worse, she had wasted hours.

  “Well done,” she said, the words feeling as dry as sand on her tongue. “You solved it all by yourself.”

  “Oh no,” Bertrand said. “I wouldn’t say that. You helped. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

  Harriet nodded. It was kind of Bertrand to say so, but she knew she had only tried to steer him in the wrong direction. If she had had her way, they wouldn’t have looked into Strachan’s past at all, much less the whistling. Bertrand would never have solved the case.

  “Well, that’s that,” Sir William said. “Arrest the girl, Simpson, and take her back to Tharsis City immediately.”

  Harriet’s head shot up. “No!” They couldn’t go back now. She hadn’t found the package. Her mission had been a failure. “Please.”

  Sir William looked startled.

  Reginald Pratt stepped forward. “I really can’t allow that, Sir William.”

  Sir William blinked. “I beg your pardon, Viscount Brotherton?”

  “The young lady has promised me the first dance tonight. If she and her brother-in-law leave now, whom shall I dance with? I am sure there is somewhere in this hotel where the murderer can be locked up until tomorrow.”

  Damn you, Reginald, Harriet thought. I could have handled that. She would have found a way to stay. Now Reginald would get to claim credit. He would blame her for everything that had gone wrong. Couldn’t manage it on her own, he would say. She wanted to strangle him.

  Now that the murderer had been captured, Harriet had no excuse to question the hotel guests or staff. Over the next few hours, as she prepared for the ball with the help of an automatic maid, she went frantically over the list of guests and staff in her mind. She and Bertrand had interviewed them all, but only to establish alibis for the murder. There was little that made any of them stand out. The redheaded man who had winked at her on the submersible had waggled his eyebrows and leered at her as she and Bertrand had tried to question him, and several of the guests had been offended at being questioned at all, but she could think of nothing that pinpointed anyone as a member of the smuggling gang. She knew at least two of the gang were male, reasonably young, and of average height, but what did that tell her? There were a good thirty or forty young men here who matched that description.

  The automatic maid’s cold metal fingers fastening the ties on her ball gown sent shivers up Harriet’s back. The gown was green, silky, and far too tight. Harriet preferred, whenever she could get away with it, which unfortunately wasn’t that often, to dress in men’s clothing. That way she could run, climb, or fight if the occasion required it. In this thing, she would have trouble eating a pastry. She sat on the edge of the bed to allow the automatic maid to fix her hair, and suddenly realized just how tired she was. She had been up most of the previous night, and today had been exhausting both physically and mentally. She should just fall back on the bed and not get up again for a week. And why not? This mission was a disaster. She would be out of the intelligence service the moment she got back to Tharsis City.

  No. She might have failed, but Bertrand hadn’t. She would celebrate for him. He had needed this even more than she had. Amy and their unborn child would now be secure. So what if she never got the chance to travel across Mars? How many people had been to a ball a hundred feet beneath the surface of the Valles Marineris?

  She shook off the automatic maid’s attention, strapped her narrow, thin knife to her arm, pulled on her jacket to cover it, even though it looked absurd over the ball gown, and went to find Bertrand.

  The ballroom was a domed structure made of hardened glass and steel. The water outside was illuminated by streams of photon emission globes swimming in complex patterns around the ballroom. Within the ballroom, tiny, mechanical glow-bugs darted and dived like shoals of luminescent, multicolored fish. A small orchestra at the far end had already begun to play when Harriet arrived with Bertrand.

  Bertrand stared wide-mouthed in amazement at the glittering gowns of the ladies and the jackets of the gentleman which were covered in whirring machinery, but Harriet couldn’t let go of her failed mission. She had missed something, she knew it. It was scraping away at the back of her brain like a burrow-bug. What was it, though?

  The hotel butler, Mr. Heathcote, announced Colonel and Mrs. Fitzpatrick. The colonel was dressed in full military regalia, his sword strapped to his side. As always, his expression was unreadable. Mrs. Fitzpatrick would have been impossible to miss from anywhere in the room. Her hat sprouted feathers that were over six feet long and shimmering with color. Harriet had no idea how Mrs. Fitzpatrick had even gotten through the doorway.

  Reginald Pratt spotted Harriet from the other side of the ballroom and headed towards her, smirking.

  Damn it! He looked like he was having the time of his life. He must be delighted at her failure. Had he forgotten that it was his job to step in and retrieve the package if she couldn’t? Unless he already had it. She set her jaw.

  “Miss George. There you are. Just in time for our dance, I believe.”

  Very clearly and very precisely, Harriet said, “I would rather dance with a slug-beetle.”

  Reginald’s eyes widened in shock. But before he could say anything, Harriet grabbed her brother-in-law’s hand. “I believe it is your duty to protect me and dance with me, Bertrand. You wouldn’t want me to fall victim to anyone…inappropriate.”

  Bertrand snorted. “I’ve never met anyone less in need of protection than you.” But he took her hand anyway and led her onto the dance floor.

  Harriet had always hated dancing, but it was one of the skills that the intelligence serv
ice required, so she had reluctantly learned. She let Bertrand lead her through the steps while her mind worried and prodded at her problem. Assume Reginald Pratt doesn’t have the package. If he did, none of it mattered.

  The package had to be somewhere in the hotel. Even at her most optimistic, Harriet didn’t believe the letters and loose papers she’d taken from Strachan’s room were it. So, not in his room, and she hadn’t been able to find anywhere else he might have hidden it. Where, then? It certainly hadn’t been on his body.

  Or had it? That nagging feeling in the back of her brain flared as she thought of his body lying there. She had searched him, but what had she missed?

  “I wonder if we’ll be in the paper?” Bertrand said.

  “What?”

  “The newspapers. They’ll be reporting this. It’s one of the most important events of the Season, and there’s been a murder now, too. I wonder if we’ll get a mention? I don’t suppose we will, because of all these important people, but it would be nice to show Amy.”

  Harriet stopped so abruptly she almost tripped Bertrand. The itch in her brain had erupted like a lizard-fox larva. “Bertrand. You’re brilliant!”

  “I am?”

  “Where’s the newspaper Mr. Strachan was carrying?”

  “Um… In my room. Evidence, you know. I don’t suppose we need it now.”

  Harriet pulled her hands free. “Thank you. I’ll be back.”

  Ignoring the astonished looks and shocked comments, Harriet hurried from the ballroom and through the hotel, back to Bertrand’s room.

  The evidence was gathered in a trunk that Bertrand had commandeered from the hotel. She scrambled past Miss Wright’s tools, past the carefully clipped articles that had led Bertrand inexorably to his conclusion, to Mr. Strachan’s belongings.

  There, at the bottom, carefully placed in a leather folder, was a copy of the twelfth of April Tharsis Times, which Strachan had been carrying to identify himself. With shaking hands, Harriet unfolded it. The headline was the same, the lead articles were the same. The new manufactory. The crashed Mars-ship. Had she gotten this wrong? Was it just a stupid idea?

  There! On page four. The scandal at Mrs. Parkinson’s birthday party.

  She hurried over to the bed where the newspapers Bertrand had borrowed from the hotel were now stacked. He’d sorted them neatly in order.

  Sorry, Bertrand. She pushed the top papers aside and pulled out the twelfth of April edition. She flicked to page four.

  She had been right. Not Mrs. Parkinson. Mrs. Parker. It could have been a correction in a later edition, but now that she looked more carefully, there were other differences, too. Just a few altered words and numbers here and there, or an odd paragraph replaced. Nothing that anyone would notice. Except she had noticed, without realizing.

  There was a code in the differences between the two newspapers. It was so obvious she wanted to kick herself. The newspaper wasn’t just the means of identifying her contact. It was the package itself, and now she had it.

  Using her knife, she slit her jacket’s lining and slid the newspaper inside.

  Now, she should grab Bertrand and get him to requisition a submersible and take her and the prisoner back to Tharsis City without delay. Better not even tell Reginald. She still didn’t know if she could trust him. She hurried out of her room, closing and locking the door.

  “There you are!”

  Harriet turned to see the red-haired young man looming just behind her. He grinned.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Harriet said, trying to step around him.

  The man’s grin widened as he moved into her way. “Oh, I saw how you looked at me on the submersible and I’ve seen you looking at me since. I know exactly what you want.”

  He took a step closer, blocking her in against the wall.

  “Move away.”

  The young man’s left hand alighted on her shoulder.

  “Last warning.”

  He ignored her.

  Harriet looked him calmly in the eye. “Take your hand off me.”

  The man’s other hand touched her waist and began to move upward beneath her jacket.

  Harriet reached up, wrapped her hand around his little finger, and wrenched it back. The man screamed. Harriet didn’t let go. She kept pushing, driving him to the ground. As the man curled into a ball around his broken finger, he shouted, “Her jacket. It’s in her jacket!”

  An answering shout came from around the corner. Harriet cursed.

  She broke into a run, and almost tripped over her own legs. How was anyone supposed to run in a ridiculous dress like this? It was more like a waddle. Already she heard feet pounding down the hallway. Damnation. She bent over and, using both hands, tore the ball gown up one seam. That’s better. She took off toward the safety of the ballroom.

  The man whose finger she had broken was coming after her, still half curled around his injury, but he had been joined by his equally red-headed brother and they were gaining.

  Don’t fight if you don’t have to do. Getting the package to safety had to be her priority.

  Another shout sounded as a third man came racing after the first two. That decided it. Her odds had suddenly dropped. She increased her pace.

  Running in this stupid dress was still awkward, despite the torn seam. The blasted corset made it impossible to take real breaths. As for her stupid slippers, they flapped like a pair of carpet-fish strapped to her feet. Oh, well. She kicked them off.

  The sound of the ball in full swing grew louder. Harriet pelted around the corner. There. Up ahead. The lights of the ball, the swirling crowds.

  A hand flailed for her, catching her sleeve. Harriet stumbled, then wrenched free. She heard a curse right behind her and she forced extra speed into her trembling legs.

  The butler looked up in alarm as Harriet sprinted toward him. He raised a hand, but Harriet ignored him.

  The ball was a mass of dancing pairs surrounded by crowds talking loudly. Harriet dived into the chaos. Light flickered from the swooping mechanical bugs inside and the trails of photon-emission devices beyond the metal-and-glass dome.

  An outraged shout behind her told her that her pursuers had not abandoned the chase. They had shoved the butler aside were peering and craning over people’s heads. One spotted her and pointed, and they came, shouldering their way past the guests.

  Damn it! Where was Bertrand? Where was Reginald? She ducked away, but it was no good. The men spread out, stalking her. How was it so hard to find help?

  One of the men rushed out of the crowd, bulling towards her. She twisted and sidestepped, letting his momentum carry him past and adding a shove. The man careered out of control into the wall and dropped, stunned.

  A second man grabbed her, bending her arm behind her back and locking an elbow around her neck. She tried to slam her head back, but he was pressed too close. She scraped her heel down his leg, but without shoes it did no damage. She was starting to feel dizzy. The blood to her brain was shutting off. She couldn’t reach his eyes with her fingers.

  A fist shot past her head, seemingly from nowhere, and slammed into the man’s face. He dropped, releasing Harriet. She blinked the blackness from her vision. Colonel Fitzpatrick stood over her unconscious attacker.

  “What the devil is going on?” he demanded. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was staring from the crowd, her giant feathers swaying.

  Harriet’s attackers had found reinforcements. Five tough-looking men formed a semicircle and closed in. Thugs for hire.

  One of the men pointed a finger at her. “She’s a thief!”

  Harriet’s jaw dropped. She looked up at the colonel. His cold eyes were taking in the scene, emotionless.

  She shouldn’t do this. It was against every rule. She could be sacrificing her career. She didn’t even know whose side the colonel was on. But she couldn’t take on these thugs alone. Time for a gamble.

  She wet her lips. “I am carrying a package
for the British-Martian Intelligence Service,” she whispered. “These men must not get hold of it.”

  The colonel’s eyes fixed on her for a second.

  “Then they shall not.”

  He stepped forward, sword sliding from its sheath.

  One of the men rushed him, then reeled back, blood spraying from a slash across his arm. The colonel hardly seemed to have moved. The men exchanged glances. Then three of them closed on the colonel. One went down immediately, but the other two forced the colonel back, away from Harriet.

  The final man came for her. He was bigger than her, muscled, his face and fists scarred. She retreated, watching him. Distantly, Harriet realized the sounds of the ball had ceased and had been replaced by shouts and screams, but she couldn’t spare any attention. Her attacker lunged. Harriet ducked under his arms and buried a fist in his stomach.

  Or at least she tried to.

  Ouch. What was he made of? Stone?

  He spun, and she danced out of range.

  The second of the colonel’s attackers was down now, the sword taking him through the neck, but the final man was more careful and he was keeping the colonel away from Harriet.

  Her own attacker darted at her. One meaty hand closed on her close-fitting jacket. She allowed herself to be pulled toward him and followed the motion with a knee between his legs. The tight ball gown almost didn’t allow it, but at the last moment it tore further, exposing an indecent amount of petticoat and leg, and she connected solidly with his groin. The man roared in agony, and Harriet punched him in the throat. She put the whole weight of her body into it, driving through her shoulder, and she felt something in his throat crumple. She stepped away in time to see the last of the colonel’s opponents fall bleeding to the floor.

  Slowly, she realized that the screams and shouts weren’t just coming from around her and the colonel. In fact, most of them were coming from the entrance to the ballroom.

  Bertrand burst from the crowd.