by David Wake
At the Rotunda, they turned left towards the Prison section.
Charlotte leant again the wall to peer along the various corridors.
When she was sure, Charlotte said, “It’s clear.”
“Thank goodness.”
“This is cold.”
“What’s cold?”
“The wall.”
“Well, of course it is.”
“It’s slightly damp.”
“I dare say this glorious new world has a few building problems same as any era.”
They went straight ahead, fighting both the impulse to stride purposefully and to shuffle furtively. At the end, there was a stone staircase, wide and open, leading both up and down. Charlotte followed the stair up to the landing, where it backed around to go up to the next level. There was a barrier across the landing, heavy wood with iron reinforcing. Looking down, there was a similar obstruction below, but this was just wooden.
“Why is their security heavier to leave than to keep people in the prison?” she asked quietly.
“I was wondering that. There must be something upstairs. The cells are down.”
They went down.
Although the barrier was all the way across the half–landing, there was a normal sized door cut into the middle and this was open. They went through, crossing the line between simply pretending to be lost and genuinely trespassing. On the wall facing them, there was a curved mirror designed to allow the Desk Sergeant to see up the staircase. It also allowed them to see that the man was reading a penny–dreadful.
Georgina started to ask the obvious: “How are we going… Charlotte?”
Charlotte sauntered over to desk.
“Hello,” she said.
The Sergeant started, his feet jerking off the desk and his chair nearly capsizing.
“Miss… I…”
“That’s Half–penny Marvel, isn’t it?”
The man glanced at the cover of his lurid magazine: “Yes.”
“Is there a Sexton Blake story?”
“Yes.”
“Is it good?”
“I’ve not read it yet.”
“Oh, but it’s the best bit.”
“I think so too, so I leave it until last.”
“Georgina and I shouldn’t be long.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
As she went past, Charlotte saw Georgina smiling at the Sergeant with a crookedness to her mouth as if her face didn’t agree with the deception.
“Excuse me, Miss, but–”
“Ma’am,” said Georgina. “I’m married.”
“Sorry Ma’am.”
They rounded the corner.
It was all they could do to stop themselves giggling with excitement and relief.
Further on, they found a Warder.
“Excuse me,” Georgina asked. “We’re here to visit Unc– Jeremiah Deering, a prisoner.”
The man considered them suspiciously, but he went to a ledger and checked.
“Deering… Deering… Let me see. Carstairs, Conway, Danton, Deering – Doctor Deering, here we are. No, I’m afraid no visits are allowed.”
“Why not?”
“Says here, ‘NK’, that’s ‘Non–contemporaneous Knowledge’ – means he can tell people things that could lead to the end of the world.”
“Oh – what if we promised not to ask him about that?”
He snorted, his moustache flaring with the exhalation.
“We’ll be going then,” said Georgina. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
“Miss.”
“It’s Ma’am.”
Georgina led Charlotte back around the corner.
“But–” Charlotte began, but Georgina raised her finger and moved closer to whisper.
“I saw the ledger, number nineteen, along there. If I keep him occupied, then you can slip along the corridor and see Uncle.”
Charlotte nodded.
“Find out about the… find out everything.”
Charlotte saluted: “Yes Ma’am.”
Georgina strode back and rapped the desk top with the umbrella handle to gain the man’s complete attention: “Excuse me, but I wondered who I might ask for permission to see Doctor Deering?”
“That would be Mrs Frasier. I can ring through.”
“That would be most satisfactory.”
The man turned to the contraption on the wall, lifted the earpiece off and wound a small handle. Georgina’s hand waved desperately around her bustle and Charlotte, keeping low, snuck past and down the corridor.
The passage ahead was dark and narrow with doors on either side. They were numbered in big white letters like the houses on streets with the odd numbers on the left and the even numbers on the right. Each door was cast iron, spotted with rivets around the edge with a slot for parcels in the centre and a spy hole. Charlotte tiptoed along, ducking in case the prisoner inside might be looking out. After three doors, there was a gap created by a buttress and arch, then another three doors. That was one to six, seven to twelve and another supporting arch and, finally, thirteen to eighteen before a blank wall.
There wasn’t a nineteen!
Wait, as her eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, she saw that the end wall, contained an iron door, black on dark brick, with no number.
When she reached it, her eyes were level with the slot because she was bent so low. It was designed to put things in, and then shunt them into the cell, without ever having to open the door.
She stood.
The eyehole was higher than her forehead and designed for tall Warders and Peelers, rather than little girls who were out–of–bounds.
She raised herself on tiptoe and could just see through.
The view was strange, distorted like a Hall of Mirrors at the fairground, as the image was stretched out, so she could observe the whole room, everything except the door itself. There was little to see: a simple bed and a desk. Uncle Jeremiah, his wild sideburns as unruly as his thinning hair, sat on the bed peering over his half–moon glasses at a book.
Charlotte knocked.
The iron door was too big to carry the noise.
“Uncle Jeremiah… Uncle Jeremiah…”
She tapped the service hatch. It sounded like a cymbal and Charlotte jumped, afraid that the noise would attract the Warder. The corridor behind her was dark and empty, but still full of menace.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Charlotte… Charlotte Deer–”
“Lottie! Little Lottie!”
“Shhh…”
“Lottie – whatever are you doing here? How? You can’t be here. You’ll get into trouble. Why are you always getting into trouble, Lottie?”
“Uncle, we need to know what’s going on.”
“But if you are here, then you already know.”
“We know about the Temporal Peelers and the Chronological Court, but there’s more.”
“More?”
“You had a patent under St. George’s statue in Earnestine’s office, the Patent Pending Office, and–”
“So that’s what Boothroyd meant.”
“Yes, and there was a book missing from your rooms, the one you gave…” Charlotte lowered her voice. “Mrs Frasier.”
“Mrs Frasier?”
“Yes, and we know that she’s… well, Ness.”
“You know that she’s Earnestine!?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear Lord.”
“But there’s more isn’t there?”
Charlotte became aware of her breathing, a faraway moan and distant footsteps.
“Uncle?”
“I can’t… this is terrible. What have I done?”
“Uncle, the book, I got it off Mrs Frasier.”
“You did,” said Uncle Jeremiah. “She won’t be happy about that.”
She heard him stumble around inside the cell and other noises, a striding thump–thump and a sharper clack–clack: many boots and one set of narrower heels.
“
Uncle?”
She jumped at the clattering noise. The service hatch shifted, pulled into the cell and something landing in it making it resound like a drum.
“Who’s C. M.?” Charlotte asked.
“The hatch.”
Charlotte pulled the metal handle back and the hatch clunked towards her. Inside was a rod or sceptre with a jewel at the end. She reached for it like a little girl pushing her hand into the jar for some humbugs.
The footsteps increased in volume and pace, closing in.
“Charlotte,” Uncle Jeremiah whispered urgently. “I must tell you everything.”
Charlotte put her ear to the door: “Go on.”
She listened, clutching the book to herself, the book called… and her Uncle tried to explain. He’d told her so many stories of adventure when she was young as she’d sat by the roaring fire on Tosca the Tiger, tales that began ‘once upon a time…’ and ended ‘happily ever after’. This one too was about ‘once’ and ‘time’ and ‘ever after’.
“Well, well, well.”
Charlotte turned to see the familiar face of Earnestine looming over her, full of tight lipped disapproval and anger, but it wasn’t her sister: it was Mrs Frasier flanked by two Scrutinisers.
“Lottie, dear Lottie,” said Mrs Frasier and she snatched the book off her. “The Time Machine – mine I think.”
“What you’re doing, it’s–”
“What has he told you?”
“Everything! I know–”
But she never got to finish her sentence.
Chapter XVIII
Mrs Frasier
Mrs Frasier examined the scrawl inside the flyleaf and then snapped the book shut. H. G. Wells, she thought, had a lot to answer for.
She put it down on her desk, her finger resting on the cover as if she were holding the sphinx down. It was… unfortunate that Jeremiah had talked to Charlotte.
If only she could go back and change it, if only she could undo those five minutes – and they couldn’t have talked for longer than that – and make everything right again.
But then she did have a time machine and agents at her beck and call, so it was moderately straight forward.
Yes, she could save Georgina and, mostly importantly, Earnestine. Save Earnestine, that was essential. To save herself, she’d have to do that. And there had been an attempt on the young girl here in the future: it beggared belief. Posterity – that was all that mattered, and as for the others: well, the Derring–Do Club would have to make sacrifices.
She picked up the telephone and spun the handle.
A voice sounded, distant and distorted.
“Get me Scrutiniser Jones – at once.”
There was a kerfuffle at the other end of the line, a shouted instruction across the Peelers’ guardroom, but before the long the officer came on.
“I have a mission for you,” Mrs Frasier said. “A little searching and a little rubbing out.”
“Expunction, Ma’am?” said the distant Scrutiniser.
“Yes.”
She busied herself with papers until Scrutiniser Jones and Chief Examiner Lombard arrived in her office. The details needed going through, the time and place, but her sisters had been together in the court room. Georgina would have talked to Earnestine back in the small library, of course, but that couldn’t be helped. Ripples always spread outwards with unforeseen consequences. The two of them were out of the way, which was the main thing, and so Lombard and his team had plenty of time.
Time – ha! It felt like it was running out.
Lombard knew what to do, the tall man nodding as she gave him his instructions.
“Have you found out anything about that assassin?”
“No, Ma’am,” said the Chief Examiner. “We’re working on it. Checker Rogers had a hunch and he’s… well, checking.”
Mrs Frasier smiled at the gaunt, tall Chief Examiner, so unsuited in appearance for making a joke.
And what about Uncle Jeremiah, Mrs Frasier thought.
He really could no longer be trusted. He had been there at the start telling her stories by the roaring fire, planting ideas of adventure and exploration in her head, and suggesting, oh so casually, the thoughts that had changed her life.
He’d have to be tried next. Incommunicado, so that he didn’t say anything inopportune at the wrong moment, even though that went against her policy. Due process was important. She’d put it off for as long as she could, but now he was simply too dangerous. If only… but he had objected to their use of the technology. It was time.
Time… she huffed: that book, that bloody book.
Try as she might to ignore the impulse, the bonds were too strong. She had to see him. She set off along the corridor with Scrutiniser Jones in tow before she actively considered the decision, but she was walking there, so somehow she had already made the choice.
The room did not have a roaring fire and there was no glass of port to have on the sly. Doctor Deering sat on the edge of the bed with his books clutched to his chest and his half–moon glasses perched on his nose. She was conscious for the first time of how old he was. It had never mattered before, but now he seemed shrunk, diminished, as if somehow he was being reduced by some Temporal Ague as he readied himself to be rubbed away.
The man had always been so vital and alive, needing the merest of nudges to send him back in time from ‘happily ever after’ to ‘once upon a time’.
“Uncle,” she said, “I would like a story, a simple tale of Derring–Do, an adventure with heroes and heroines, where the villains all talk in funny foreign accents.”
“You don’t have to do this, my dear.”
Mrs Frasier towered above him.
“I am in blood stepped so far that, should I wade no more, returning were so tedious as go o’er.”
“Earnestine–”
“Yes,” she said, kneeling down in front of him and taking his hand. “And I do have to do this. But the young Earnestine will take over and be me, but with my slate wiped clean, my innocence and my honour will be restored.”
“But–”
“I trust her when all men doubt me, but make allowance for their doubting.”
“Charity, have pity.”
“We’re nearly there, so close…”
“Mrs Frasier… please?”
“Call me Ness.”
Doctor Deering looked at her, pleading in his eyes.
“We have our parts to play, Jeremiah,” she prompted.
“Only her friends call her ‘Ness’.”
Scrutiniser Jones appeared at the door: “It’s time, Ma’am.”
“Jeremiah?”
Mrs Frasier waited. She knew that time was running out, that the act must be completed, but she knew that she couldn’t rush the dear old man.
Doctor Deering for his part considered for a long time, his unruly brows furrowed and animated by the turmoil within until, finally, he spoke.
“I will… Earnestine.”
Miss Deering-Dolittle
Earnestine went through the legal process again: reading the charges, pleas, prosecution, defence, summing up, jury deliberation, verdict and finally the sentencing. Her tapping count added another pencil mark to the list and each step had a few, tiny smudges of graphite attention already. She had copies of the paperwork, even blank forms that could be filled in, but none of it seemed like an answer.
“She was caught,” said Georgina summing up. She had paced about the room, distractingly. The oak tables, floor and shelves were used to silence and study for a 100 years… 200 years now, and not the agitation of an angry and distraught young lady.
“She’ll be told off, detention, lines,” said Earnestine. “The usual.”
“The usual?!”
Earnestine sighed: Charlotte was a handful. Georgina and Earnestine had always had to endure those lectures in the Principal’s study about their errant sibling. She seemed to get away with murder. Perhaps not killing exactly, but crimes that the schools sometim
es claimed were worse, and they’d had to endure Charlotte’s telling–off second–hand.
“Yes, Georgina, it was foolish of you to try and see Uncle Jeremiah.”
Privately Earnestine thought it would have been a jolly good idea, if it had worked. She was sure a long talk with their Uncle would clear up a lot of things, as it always had. She’d much rather be sitting by his roaring fire listening to his stories, they filled her head with such ideas.
“Ness?”
“Did she talk to him?”
“I think so,” said Georgina. “We found out he was in cell nineteen and Charlotte made it down the corridor.”
“Then when you find her, she’ll tell you what she’s learnt.”
“When will that be?”
“Look,” Earnestine snapped, her hand hovering over her books. “I have a lot to do here and you aren’t helping.”
“What’s the point of all this?”
“Mrs Frasier–”
“You.”
“Me, then, is using the legal system to cement power,” Earnestine said and she held her hands wide to encompass all the books: “This is the playing field–”
“It’s not hockey.”
“And if we can prove Uncle Jeremiah is innocent, then we can have as many conversations with him as we want.”
Georgina pointed her finger and flushed even more with anger, but she said nothing: it made sense, Earnestine thought, it did make sense.
“Thank you.”
Georgina bowed her head: “What can I do to help?”
“Read these and find something we can use.”
“Where do I start?”
“Anywhere is as good as anywhere else.”
Georgina pulled a chair out, but as she did so there was a sharp knock at the door. Two Peelers came in. One of them was the bulky Scrutiniser Jones.
“We’re here to escort Mrs Merryweather to her room.”
“I’m not a prisoner.”
“Of course not,” he replied. “We’re here to escort you to your room.”
“It’s not time,” said Georgina. Earnestine noticed that she was fiddling with that man’s watch, yet again.
“Your room, Ma’am.”
Georgina pushed the chair back making Earnestine smirk because of the scraping noise she managed to generate.