The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts

by David Wake

  “Seconds, Colonel?” Georgina said. “And, as you insist, Colonel, for myself too.”

  “What? Oh, yes dear,” the Colonel spluttered.

  Mrs Jago served and then removed the bowl to avoid any possibility of thirds.

  As for dessert, cream did not come north of Cornwall according to Mrs Jago.

  When dinner was over, Georgina checked the master bedroom and found that Mrs Jago had removed the sheets, so Georgina found fresh and made the bed up herself. She found Fellowes in the scullery polishing the silver: the old man bent over his task, one eye concentrating and the other closed.

  “Fellowes.”

  “Miss?”

  “Ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I would like the key.”

  “There are only four keys to the front door, mine, Mrs Jago’s, Mrs Falcone’s and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s.”

  “The key to my bedroom.”

  “The guest room key is–”

  “The master bedroom!”

  “Miss, that’s–”

  “Ma’am!”

  “I don’t wish to cause friction, but Mrs Falcone–”

  “Mrs Falcone, Miss Millicent, Colonel Fitzwilliam and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all are not the legal owners of this property according to Messrs Tumble, Judd & Babcock.”

  “That, if you pardon me, has to be decided.”

  “And when it is decided, I shall remember who showed me due courtesy and who did not!”

  “There is a spare key.”

  “All of them.”

  She had three keys, and she locked them and herself safely in the master bedroom.

  Mrs Falcone and Miss Millicent were not mentioned in Arthur’s journal until the page on which Georgina let fly with her careful handwriting. The Colonel was, however; described in terms that suggested he was a family friend, one who had first interested Arthur in military service. Georgina couldn’t reconcile Arthur’s descriptions of the Colonel with the man himself.

  And then there was that other woman in the picture.

  Miss Charlotte

  “Perhaps she’s been arrested?” Charlotte suggested.

  Earnestine’s expression was one of derision, followed by another of disquiet.

  “We can solve this in an elemental way,” Charlotte continued. She nodded with her best sage expression on her face.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I observe that you have packed for travelling and so have I.”

  “I packed yours if you remember.”

  “Perhaps there are other clues…” Charlotte said, casting about for just such.

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Ah ha!”

  Charlotte pointed at the hall table, atop of which were two parcels wrapped in brown paper.

  “So?” said Earnestine. “The post came.”

  “There’s no stamp and they are only addressed to…” Charlotte examined the parcel tags. “You and me… oh goody, a present.”

  “Charlotte, application.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Do you know what these words mean, Charlotte?”

  But Charlotte wasn’t listening. The clues she needed were indeed on the hall table, two boxes wrapped up in brown paper. There were parcel tags, one to ‘Earnestine’ and the other to ‘Lottie’. Charlotte examined both parcels: they were different, rattled differently and when she’d carelessly ripped with abandon the wrappings of her own, she revealed a paper bag of macaroons, all fresh and delicious.

  As she munched, she picked up Earnestine’s box and pushed her nose up against it. Sure enough, it was that pong that Uncle Jeremiah always bought for Earnestine. Her deduction–

  “Uncle! Uncle!”

  She ran through the house, but there was no–one in the drawing room or the study.

  “What’s all this commotion, Dearie?” It was Cook, rubbing her hands on her apron as she bumbled out of the kitchen. “Miss Deering–Dolittle, you’re back too.”

  “Where’s is he?” Charlotte demanded.

  “I don’t know who you mean?”

  “Uncle Jeremiah.”

  “He called earlier with his arms full of parcels.”

  “It was Uncle Jeremiah… he’s gone out with Georgina.”

  The Cook shook her head: “Mrs Merryweather’s not been in all day. Or yesterday.”

  That was strange.

  “There are only two parcels,” Charlotte said, pointing at the solitary parcel and the discarded brown paper.

  “He left two and took one with him,” said Cook.

  Charlotte narrowed her eyes as she contemplated this.

  “Did he do anything else?”

  “He waited in the drawing room, Miss, and asked for some boiling water and a piece of candy. I gave him a cup and let him help himself to the jar.”

  “There’s candy in the jar!”

  “Lottie,” Earnestine warned. “Go on Cook.”

  “That’s all,” said Cook. “He didn’t drink much. Queer sort of request.”

  “Hmm… thank you, Cook,” said Charlotte.

  “Don’t you be eating all those biscuits, my dear,” said Cook. “You’ll ruin your appetite.”

  “Mmm… mmmm… I know,” Charlotte said, realising that events were moving apace.

  “Thank you, Cook,” said Earnestine.

  Cook went back to her duties in the kitchen, leaving Earnestine and Charlotte alone in the hall.

  “Mister Boothroyd vanished – literally – and Uncle Jeremiah is being hunted, caught for all we know, and perhaps Georgina has gone too,” Earnestine said.

  Charlotte raced away, and then rattled about upstairs, causing the hall gas light to swing as she stomped about on the floorboards.

  “Charlotte!”

  Charlotte shouted down: “When they arrested Boothby–”

  “Mister Boothroyd.”

  “Be that as it may,” she said, pattering back downstairs, “did they let him pack?”

  “Of course not. They threw him into a carriage, took him to Battersea and then they all disappeared into thin air. I saw it, Charlotte, I saw the Temporal Peelers disappear into thin air.”

  “Georgina packed for a long trip: clothes from the wardrobe and her travelling trunk have gone.”

  Earnestine checked the hall table: “She can’t have done, she hasn’t left a note.”

  “Perhaps she had to leave in a hurry.”

  “If she had time to pack her travelling trunk, then she had time to leave a note.”

  “Uncle Jeremiah knows.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Charlotte linked her hands together behind her back to stride across the carpet. “He came with three parcels and left only two of them. One of them was for me, another for you, so I deduce that the third was for Georgina–”

  “Have you been reading my copy of the Strand?”

  “I’ve not even been in your bedroom. So, if he took Georgina’s present with him, then logistically–”

  “Logically.”

  “Logically, he’s gone to meet Georgina.”

  “That’s jolly clever, Charlotte,” Earnestine admitted. “Sensibly reasoned and without any flights of fancy.”

  Charlotte felt important.

  “But where have they gone?” said Earnestine.

  “Well, Uncle Jeremiah’s on the run from the Temporal Peelers. Perhaps… he’s been arrested by now and Georgina too, because Cook hasn’t seen her all day or yesterday, so perhaps these Chronological Rozzers have taken them back to Roman times or to the Stone Age to eat Dillpod… Diplod… that skeleton thing in the British Museum.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “But possible.”

  “Where did you pick up a word like ‘Rozzer’?”

  “School. I told you it was a horrid place.”

  “Only because you don’t apply yourself, whereas Georgina is responsible,” Earnestine said. “She’d leave a note.”

  “
Are you saying that I’m not responsible?”

  “That is not what I said, but now you mention it: yes, you are decidedly irresponsible.”

  “Ness!”

  “Don’t whine. So why isn’t there a note on the hall table?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t think it important enough to leave a note.”

  “It is a matter of a minute or two to write a note and Georgina never forgot.”

  “Perhaps it fell down the back.”

  “Charlotte, it couldn’t…” but Earnestine must have realised that it could have done, for she peered down the crack between the wall and the table, and then underneath before she heaved the table away from the wall. “The maids don’t clean here properly. There are crumbs down here… your crumbs.”

  “Too important for a note,” said Charlotte.

  “There’s no such thing. If it’s trivial like going into the garden or if you are in a rush to catch a particular post and are only going to the pillar box at the end of the Row, then you wouldn’t leave a note, but anything else: we have a system, Lottie. You’re the only one who doesn’t follow it.”

  “But some things require explanation, so she’d write a letter.”

  “Are you suggesting that she’d write us a letter, walk down to the pillar box and post it?”

  “Possibly.”

  Earnestine gesticulated towards the road: “If she posted it in the morning, it would have arrived by third delivery, fourth at the latest, and even if it was the last post it would arrive by first delivery in the morning, and the maids put the post on the hall table. Georgina is not profligate, she wouldn’t waste a stamp, she’d have simply put it on the table herself.”

  Earnestine’s speech ended with her pointing at the empty table.

  “She packed her trunk,” said Charlotte, “which is pre–meditated–”

  “It’s not a murder mystery.”

  “So she left a note… or a message.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “In code!”

  “Code or no code, it would be on the hall table!”

  “Important letter… write it in the study…” Charlotte continued mumbling, her hands out in front of her with her fingers acting out the commentary. She wrote a tiny squiggle in the air, slipped nothing into the grip of her other hand and then held the imaginary object out to put down.

  She looked round.

  Earnestine was standing by the hall table pointing obviously. Red and blue patches shimmered on her stern features as the afternoon sun came through the stained glass of the front door. “I can’t see the cab arrive,” Charlotte added.

  “What cab? We’ve not ordered a cab. Oh, do think, Charlotte.”

  “Gina packed a trunk, so she had to have left by cab, so she ordered a cab in the morning–”

  “Or whenever she left.”

  “Or whenever, so she’d wait in the drawing room… and Uncle Jeremiah waited in the drawing room with hot water and candy, and he figured it out.”

  Charlotte waved her non–existent letter at Earnestine and then opened the door into the drawing room.

  “Charlotte! You’ll get dirt in… Charlotte?”

  The drawing room was still and quiet. Charlotte scanned around quickly and saw it at once.

  “Charlotte,” Earnestine chided behind her. “She would not–”

  “Picture’s gone.”

  Charlotte pointed at the gap on the wall.

  Earnestine took a few seconds to change trains as it were, and then she checked the framed pictures that were still there.

  “You’re right… mother… father… expedition…”

  “It was the one taken at the theatre, the new one.”

  “Why? Oh, Lottie–”

  “She wanted one of the three of us together standing shoulder–to–shoulder helping one another.”

  “Charlotte, really–”

  “So be quiet and let me think.”

  “Oh–”

  Earnestine was quiet, silenced by Charlotte’s raised finger.

  Charlotte closed her eyes, but trying to fathom a deduction was like trying to remember a Latin word when the sun was shining.

  The clock ticked and tocked telling her that she was achieving nothing at all.

  She conjured up the imaginary letter again trying to feel its texture and weight.

  Tick… tock.

  Charlotte smiled; she knew and opened her eyes. She gesticulated like a magician and waved towards the mantelpiece clock without looking towards it at all.

  Earnestine followed the gesture: saw, jumped forward and snatched down the envelope. The clock tottered on the edge and fell, its glass smashed on the tiled hearth and the delicate mechanism twanged, rattled and ceased.

  The silence was as complete as if time had stopped.

  Chapter VII

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  A quiet shattered by the doorbell.

  A tall silhouette complete with top hat stood behind the red and blue stained glass in the porch. It bent down to peer through, a gaunt face bulging in the window with eyes white and covered.

  Earnestine and Charlotte simply faced each other in the drawing room, each a mirror of the other’s fear.

  “They know my name,” Earnestine whispered.

  “Do they?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw them arrest someone,” Charlotte hissed back.

  “Then they’ve come to arrest one of us.”

  “Oh lummy.”

  “You or me?”

  “Or maybe neither.”

  “I doubt they’ve popped round because they heard we have candy in the jar.”

  “We have to find Georgina.”

  “I agree.”

  “Once the Derring–Do Club is back together,” said Charlotte, “it’ll be like old times.”

  “I sincerely hope not.”

  The doorbell rang again, followed by a loud hammering knock.

  “Garden!”

  Charlotte hadn’t needed the instruction as she and Earnestine scurried through the kitchen. Earnestine managed to grab the kit bag.

  “Careful!” Cook cried as they hastened past. “And be back for dinner.”

  They ran across the lawn and circled the rose garden. At the far end, hidden by trees, was a wall. This wall had been the defences of many fortresses and castles in their youth.

  “Give me a leg up!” Earnestine ordered.

  “Can’t you make it on your own?”

  “Just–”

  “Getting too old?”

  “Don’t be impertinent. I’m carrying the Adventuring Kit.”

  “Adventuring?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Charlotte linked her hands to take the dig of Earnestine’s Baker Street boots and launch her sister upwards. Earnestine scrambled at the top and then offered a helping hand, but Charlotte had already jumped up further along. Over they went into the alley beyond. Without any discussion, they started making along in the direction of Kensington Station, but two figures appeared at the far end. They were tall, dressed in black frock coats and wearing top hats. Their eyes looked huge and sinister with the glasses.

  The sisters came to the same conclusion.

  “Perhaps…”

  “Yes…”

  They scuttled away.

  “Don’t look back,” Earnestine said. “Don’t look back.”

  Charlotte glanced over her shoulder: “Run!”

  They ran.

  They came out the other side and into the busy street. Earnestine craned her neck up and looked right and left. There were no hansoms visible in either direction. There was never one when one needed one.

  They worked their way along the pavement.

  Earnestine was trying to think ahead: “Make for Addison Road or try and find a cab?”

  “Split up!?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Derring–Do Club forever.”

  They pelted along ignoring the ‘Oi’ of
workmen.

  At the corner were two men in top hats.

  “Shortcut,” said Charlotte, grabbing Earnestine’s arm and yanking her round. She disappeared into a narrow alley between a butcher’s and a tobacconist. They had to go single file, the clatter of their heels echoing off the brick walls. There was a tiny yard with two exits created by the gap between outside privies. Children playing barefoot there scattered when they arrived, and then gathered to point and joke.

  The first exit led to a street full of pawnbrokers and across the road two men in top hats turned to look at them.

  Back at the yard, the children were bolder and prepared, and plucked at their clothing practising their pick–pocketing skills. Both Earnestine and Charlotte had to swat their thieving hands away and snatch their bag back.

  The second exit led to a side road with two banks facing each other on the corner. They turned left and went with the flow of people, ladies out for a stroll and labourers carrying coal from a parked cart.

  “Top hats!” said Charlotte and she took off, running towards the banks. Earnestine followed, caught up and tapped Charlotte on her shoulder.

  “Stop!”

  “We must keep moving.”

  Earnestine paused, bent over slightly to ease the line of her corset across her ribs and panted for breath: “Wait… wait!”

  “But–”

  “We’re running from top hats.”

  “Yes–”

  “All top hats. That man… he’s talking to another gent in a bowler.”

  “We must run.”

  “They’re probably bankers or… independent means… and not Temporal Peelers. They don’t have… swords.”

  Charlotte turned her attention to the distant top hat. Sure enough, he was talking amiably to another two men, who were both wearing bowler hats. Earnestine wondered just how many upper class gentlemen they’d run from in the course of their desperate flight.

  “Where now?”

  “We’ll get off the streets,” Earnestine said, and she pointed across the road: “Tea shop! Read letter… come up with… plan.”

  Hunkered down to hide their faces, Earnestine and Charlotte waited for a gap in the traffic and then sprinted across to the tea shop. As they went in, a bell jangled to startle a waitress.