The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts

by David Wake

  Chapter VIII

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  Earnestine had been outside. She knew it was a risk, and every passer–by filled her with a dread and every pair of eyes seemed to be staring at her. Charlotte seemed to have taken to the duelling machine and if only she could transfer that dedication to more useful activities like French, Greek and Latin. They couldn’t stay hiding in the office forever and the logic that Temporal Peelers had been there, so they wouldn’t search there again, seemed flawed, even when she was feeling optimistic.

  It was Friday, three days later, and the hue–and–cry might have settled, so it was time to make a move.

  She knew that her nervousness was making her suspicious and therefore made matters worse, but she couldn’t stay in the Patent Pending Office indefinitely and she had to find out what was going on. She’d bought a few newspapers, the Times and Telegraph, and a Bradshaw for the train times. Georgina had gone to this Magdalene Chase near Tenning Halt with her trunk, so it had to be some distance, and then Earnestine realised that this logic didn’t work. Even if she was only moving next door in Zebediah Row, she’d have packed her trunk. Even so, a travelling trunk suggested a distance, so either a long coach journey or a train. Georgina had modern ideas, so it was the train. Also, Tenning Halt was very suggestive of a station.

  She found the place, eventually, in the Bradshaw: Tenning Halt was on Dartmoor!

  The actual Magdalene Chase could be some distance from the station too. Georgina’s use of the word ‘near’ showed an imprecision that was unlike her, so it seemed advisable – flicking through the pages, she saw that the London terminus in question was Paddington Station – to set off early, so that they could cover the unknown number of miles at the far end during daylight.

  She cooked a light meal of bacon and eggs with kippers for breakfast.

  “We have to find Uncle Jeremiah,” Earnestine announced as she poured a second cup of tea from the pot.

  “He’s gone to see Georgina,” Charlotte said.

  “That does seem sound and one doesn’t speak when one is chewing.”

  Charlotte made a face, which Earnestine chose to ignore.

  “He can tell us what this is all about and then we can work out how to stop these Temporal Peelers.”

  “Why?” said Charlotte. “So we can allow the destruction of the world?”

  “Oh… I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Charlotte swallowed: “Uncle Jeremiah has something they want.”

  “Does he?”

  “He’s disappeared with it.”

  “He’s gone to the future?”

  “No, he packed and went out, weeks ago,” said Charlotte and she recounted her experience at Uncle Jeremiah’s rooms.

  “So the notification of Captain Merryweather’s funeral was unopened?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he came to the funeral,” said Earnestine, “so he must have moved to somewhere in London and read it in the paper, otherwise he wouldn’t have been there.”

  Charlotte pointed at her mouth and exaggerated her chewing motions.

  Earnestine summed up: “So he has an ‘it’ that they want. Any idea what it could be? Size? Shape?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted: “But whatever ‘it’ is, Mrs Frasier won’t be happy that they haven’t got it.”

  “Mrs Frasier!”

  “Yes, I overheard them.”

  “Mrs Frasier won’t be happy that I’m Earnestine Deering–Dolittle.”

  “That’s the spirit, Ness.”

  “No, it’s something the Peeler, Chief Examiner Lombard, said when he wasn’t laughing at me,” Earnestine frowned. “And Uncle Jeremiah’s mixed up in this.”

  “You’d have thought he’d have left us a note.”

  “He probably realised that he couldn’t.”

  “He could have done. In code. He always liked codes. I didn’t find it.”

  “And then you saw this Member of Parliament arrested at Uncle Jeremiah’s rooms.”

  “No, that was in the bordello,” said Charlotte, taking another mouthful of bacon and egg.

  Earnestine suffered a strange bee–like buzzing noise and the other side of the kitchen table seemed very far away. She felt a strangling in her throat and a difficulty swallowing. She took a sip of tea, her hand shaking and then she managed a single word in reply: “Bordello!”

  “It’s a sort of hotel, but you don’t get breakfast.”

  “Breakfast!”

  “I only stayed one night. I was going to join the French Foreign Legion, but I changed my mind.”

  “French!”

  Earnestine’s hands gesticulated in jerks and she mouthed the word ‘soap’ to herself.

  “You’re not going to clean my mouth out,” said Charlotte, “because I don’t know what the words mean. There were loads of other words too: strumpet–”

  “Charlotte Deering–Dolittle!”

  “I don’t know what they mean.”

  “Mean? If you’d… paid attention at school!”

  “Reverend Long doesn’t teach those words.”

  “Of course, the Reverend Mister Long doesn’t!”

  “What do they mean then?”

  “I… absolutely do not know and would not know and couldn’t repeat the definitions even if I did and neither will you.”

  The horror of it chilled Earnestine’s flesh: selfishly she thought of herself, the middle sister married before her, the younger becoming a woman falling… it beggared belief.

  “Have you…” Earnestine phrased it very carefully, “kept your honour?”

  But Charlotte had stuffed her filthy mouth with her bread and Earnestine had to wait while she masticated, all the time drooling butter that clearly did melt in her mouth.

  Finally, Earnestine could stand it no longer: “Did you keep your honour?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did a man… touch you?”

  “Yes… it was horrible. He wanted me to take my clothes off.”

  Earnestine managed a squeak: “Did you?”

  “I hit him with the chamber pot.”

  The strange distant buzzing sensation evaporated and Earnestine smirked, imagining the moment. Charlotte smiled too, then grinned and before long the two were chuckling, laughing, and finally shrieking until tears rolled down their cheeks. Thank goodness no–one had been around to witness such the unseemly display.

  “The… contents went all over him,” Charlotte howled.

  “No!”

  “Not mine.”

  Earnestine banged the table with her fist.

  “And then he was arrested,” Charlotte said, when they had finally calmed down.

  “But they couldn’t find Uncle Jeremiah.”

  “No.”

  “These people must read the history books, their history books which are our future books, so any message, any written note, would be accessible to them, so they ought to know exactly where he is.”

  “They’d need to know when he was there too.”

  “You’re right, well done Lottie. They need to know time and place.”

  “Well, we know the time.”

  “Do we?”

  “Well, yes. We can’t travel in time, so for us it has to be now.”

  “So where is Uncle Jeremiah now?”

  “Somewhere warm,” said Charlotte.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He left his scarf behind.”

  “Dartmoor is hardly warm.”

  “Dartmoor?”

  “Magdalene Chase, Georgina’s new home, is on Dartmoor.”

  After the breakfast dishes were tidied away and washed, the two sisters sorted themselves out and collected what they thought they might need for the journey. Without discussing it, they both packed lightly being well aware that they might have to hotfoot it from pursuing Temporal Peelers.

  Earnestine re–checked the Bradshaw for the time of the next locomotive to Plymouth and
they caught a hansom at the corner to Paddington Station. Earnestine kept glancing backwards along the way, but there didn’t appear to be anyone following them.

  The station brimmed over with the capital’s bustle. A multitude of businessmen from Bristol were just disembarking and a disturbing number wore top hats. Earnestine and Charlotte were on edge as every stove pipe and chimney pot approached.

  “Everyone wears black,” Earnestine said. “You’d have thought these Peelers would have a different uniform: blue or yellow or something that stands out.”

  “Silver in the future,” said Charlotte. “I would guess.”

  “Why silver?”

  “Everything will be made of metal.”

  “Not all metals are silver.”

  “Steel is.”

  “What’s wrong with brass?”

  At the ticket office, Earnestine had to contend with the interminable queue for two or three minutes before she was bombarded with all the diverse ticket options: first, second or third, single or return. She bought two return tickets in second.

  “We’re not really dressed for first,” she explained. Their dresses were certainly in need of cleaning and ironing after their mad dash across West London and the days of hiding in an office.

  “Where do we go?”

  “The Great Western departs from Platform One.”

  “Oh, oh, Great Western, London to Plymouth… will we catch the Flying Dutchman?” Charlotte asked, excited.

  “The Flying Dutchman went out of service nearly ten years ago when they changed the gauge.”

  They waited in the clock room and later, when the train was getting ready, they stood impatiently under Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s wrought iron arches as the rain pattered on the glazed roof. The big clock ticked towards their departure time and the train was awfully late boarding, so they only had twenty minutes to find their carriage and settle.

  Finally, the platform guard checked his pocket watch, nodding to himself while the second hand ticked round to the prescribed moment, and then he blew his whistle and waved his flag, and the steam locomotive powered the train out into the drizzle towards the countryside.

  Earnestine asked for cushions when the conductor came round and they slept.

  Mrs Arthur Merryweather

  “The dead are but sleeping.”

  Mrs Falcone snuffed out the candles on the sideboard, so that the only light came from the nearly spent flames flickering on the hexagonal card table. The rest of the room was in complete darkness. When the woman sat down, she appeared frightening and otherworldly.

  “Hold hands in a circle,” she commanded.

  Georgina gripped the icy claws of Miss Millicent and the clammy palm of Colonel Fitzwilliam. The fifth member of this strange cabal smiled benevolently, his white dog collar shining in the satanic light, one corner of the five pointed star angled towards him. The Reverend Mr. Milton seemed at ease with a display, which frankly worried Georgina alarmingly.

  “Shall I say grace?” the Reverend asked.

  “That would not be appropriate, Vicar,” said Mrs Falcone. Suddenly, the woman’s eyes fluttered and then showed the whites only, causing Georgina to shy away.

  “I feel that the spirits are close tonight… yes, we will have contact. Here the curtain between our material world and the beyond is thin.”

  She moaned, pushed her hands forward, the catalyst of a fearful ripple transmitted around the table from hand to hand.

  A low moan wavered distantly.

  A sudden chill came over Georgina, her exposed neck feeling a cold breath. It was close, so close, and she wanted to turn around, but she couldn’t.

  A shriek rent the air.

  Mrs Falcone looked utterly different as if her skull beneath her flesh had been replaced by another’s.

  “No, no,” she cried. “I am plagued by the tainted, by those heathens who died here so long ago. They plead for release, but that cannot be.”

  “Steady on,” said the Colonel, but even his bluster was shrivelled by the grating sound of Mrs Falcone’s unearthly voice.

  She began shuddering.

  The table lifted, shook and dropped.

  An object flew across the room to shatter by the fireplace.

  “Keep to the circle!” Mrs Falcone demanded. “Do not falter, it is dangerous to break the circle.”

  Even Colonel Fitzwilliam’s clammy hand felt comforting and Miss Millicent’s bony fingers dug deeper.

  “I feel a presence… is it? Yes, I can hear you. There is one here, ooooh my, an imposter… the name begins with a ‘G’… Yes, Arthur. I hear you, Arthur.”

  An icy wind prickled across Georgina’s bare neck, a terrible cold, freezing. Georgina gasped, her breath forming a ghostly mist to spread across the table. The air that flowed back nearly froze her lungs. As she spoke, Mrs Falcone’s words condescended like phantoms themselves.

  “We should cast her out. We should–”

  “It’s not Arthur.”

  Georgina was as shocked as anyone that she had spoken.

  “It is Arthur, oh harlot, oh Jezebel.”

  “Then ask him what he bought for me at the seaside.”

  “The spirits do not like to be tested in this manner.”

  “Ask him!”

  “Arthur? What did you buy? It is difficult to make out what he is saying… rock… cand– a sweetmeat of some kind.”

  “No, it was not.”

  “A dress… a bonnet… a ribbon…”

  “No.”

  “He does not remember.”

  “It was when he proposed.”

  “He did not propose, you are a harlot, a wanton fallen women, an imposter, sent by the Devil himself to test us… oh, Arthur, tell me Arthur, tell me and we can cast her aside.”

  The table shook with rage.

  The cold freezing intensified.

  Georgina yanked her hands back: Miss Millicent held on tight, but her hand slipped out from Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sweaty grasp. Her chair clattered backwards causing a cry from the person standing just behind her. Georgina caught the hair of… the maid. Ice cubes ricocheted off the furniture and the bellows fell to the floor.

  The maid fought and screamed, but Georgina held firm and pulled down.

  The light came up.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam was standing by the gas taps.

  Mrs Jago stood to one side with a collection of theatrical contraptions, tubes and metal sheets for making noises.

  Mrs Falcone was incensed: “Miss, you have done something terrible–”

  “Ma’am – it’s ‘Ma’am’ to you.”

  “Miss, I think–”

  “Fellowes! Take this fake and her bunkum and throw her out of my house!”

  “Miss–” Fellowes said, but Georgina gave him a glare that Earnestine herself would have been proud of. He didn’t need further prompting: “Ma’am,” he said, correcting himself.

  “Perhaps we have been improper…” Mrs Falcone began, but Georgina spoke over her in a deep booming voice that she’d once used to frighten Charlotte.

  “You have tried to defile Arthur’s memory, which is unforgiveable.”

  “…but we meant well and…”

  “Out!”

  “Miss,” said Mrs Jago. “I have served the Merryweather family for three generations.”

  “You did not serve them tonight!”

  “Miss–”

  “Ma’am!”

  Mrs Falcone held her hands out pleading: “Perhaps in the morning we could have Mister Tumble of Tumble–”

  “Out!”

  “Gabriel, do say something.”

  “Fellowes!” Georgina ordered: “Set the dogs on them!”

  Mrs Falcone, Miss Millicent, the Reverend Mr. Milton, who was still smiling, Mrs Jago and the maid scuttled out.

  Presently the front door slammed and Georgina’s heavy breathing relented and settled to a more ladylike depth and rhythm.

  “Remarkable,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Georgina hadn’t realised he was still there. “You don’t actually possess any dogs.”

  “Colonel.”

  “I will leave if you wish, but I assure you I was as hoodwinked by those bounders as anyone,” he replied, smiling to show his missing tooth. “Ma’am.”

  Georgina havered between outrage and shock, and found herself laughing. The Colonel chuckled and then Georgina couldn’t stop herself, she threw her head back and convulsed even when her corset dug deep into her splitting sides.

  It was a generous brandy that appeared under her nose. The Colonel fixed himself one, taking his time to let Georgina regain control of her faculties. She practically snorted the brandy as another spasm timed itself to coincide with a swift gulp of the burning liquid.

  “Quite a show, quite a show, you were forceful.”

  “I’m nothing compared to my elder sister. You should meet her.”

  “I fear to do so as she must be quite something, for you, my dear, are a remarkable young lady, if I may say so.”

  “I have such a lot to write in Arthur’s journal.”

  “What did Arthur buy you?”

  “An umbrella. I gave it to my sister.”

  The Colonel nodded: “Arthur was a lucky man.”

  “He died.”

  “Men die. Men like him die all the time. It is a risk that those in the service gladly accept. But he had you during his time on Earth.”

  “You haven’t died.”

  The Colonel looked heavyhearted: “No, I was unlucky enough to be assigned to a desk and merely sent men to their deaths.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I never met someone like you. Captain Merryweather was more fortunate than I in many ways.”

  Georgina saw beneath the bluster and bravado a very different man.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You are most welcome.”

  They sat and swilled their brandies in their glasses to warm them.

  “You knew Arthur?”

  “See this,” said the Colonel. He opened his shirt – shockingly! – and showed her a savage scar, a spider’s web of lines around a central divot. “I got this in India from one of those Kali cultists, and Merry said I took it for him.”

  “You saved him?”

  “Probably.”

  “Probably?”