by Adrian Speed
Fury from Fontainebleau
A Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Mystery
Adrian Speed
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Adrian Speed
Copyright © 2018 Adrian Speed
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For my friends, who have never failed to support my artistic endeavours no matter how ridiculous
Chapter I
I have talked with Roman emperors, fought with armoured knights and outwitted a super-computer the size of the planet earth. I have had a sword driven straight through my lung and I have had to navigate Heathrow Terminal Five. I know pain.
It is without hyperbole that I write that my third year final exams were the hardest and most painful accomplishments of my life. After returning from my Easter break I descended into a foul miasma of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, stress analysis and tribology. I pushed equations longer than the Aeneid into my head and turned the cogs of my brain until results came pouring out onto the page. I was up before dawn and coffee carried me on until well after dusk. There was so much to perfect and so little time to perfect it that by the time the exams hit me there wasn’t even time to shower.
What emerged from the exam room after my final exam was a stinking, sweaty mess. Hair piled up in a crow’s-nest held in place with a spare pencil atop a brain filled with nothing but numbers. Clothes that hadn’t been washed for weeks hid a body that hadn’t been fed more than coffee and energy bars for days.
But it was over. I was free. We were all free until the next September. Alright most of us had internships and I was due at Rolls-Royce on the first of August, but at that moment, right then, I felt utterly free.
And like any other rational adult, I used that freedom to get thoroughly hammered.
After a week of parties, be they end of year or farewell, the clamour died down. Most of my friends moved back home to their parents to enjoy free food and free laundry. Soon the only people left were those going after jobs, those with no homes to go to, and myself. But not just because the price of an aeroplane ticket back to Montreal was significantly more expensive than a few weeks’ food and laundry. I had something infinitely better planned.
Kitted out in bright new clothes and thoroughly recovered from the maelstrom of mathematics, I walked towards the Edgware Road. There was no way I was braving the Underground in tourist season. Or the heat. The skies in England might perpetually threaten rain but the weather was unpleasantly warm. The city was beaten down by it. Sunbathers melted by the Serpentine, while those waiting for the bus along its edges drooped over like wilting flowers. Anyone with any sense would get out of the city in this heat and, in a way, I would as well. The heat couldn’t beat down my growing excitement. Until I reached Marble Arch, where a wave of dread rolled through me. Before I did anything else... I was going to have to visit Amir.
I took a deep breath and strode into the little shop, the electronic bell announced my entrance. Amir’s son was behind the counter, fiddling about on an iPad. He didn’t look up until I’d made it past the chocolate and the newspapers and was almost under his nose.
“Dad?” he called into the backroom. “Hannah’s here.”
“It’s nice to see someone remembers my name,” I said to myself.
“Ah, the sane one,” Amir himself appeared in the doorway. “You’re alright, girl. He’s been behaving himself.” Amir shrugged. “Came in last week with a new order and paid up until September.”
“Really? Sir Reginald actually paid up?”
“Oh there was some muttering about unfair prices and he literally cursed me to the eighth level of hell, but he paid up,” Amir nodded. “I think you talked some sense into him last time you were ’ere.”
I consider myself comparatively unflappable but for a few moments I stood there in stunned silence. When I eventually regained my senses I could only stammer out a few sentences.
“Well, that’s uh… that’s good then,” I stumbled backwards on my way out of the shop realising I had no reason to remain. “I’ll just… I’ll stop by again soon… then. Anyway.” I ducked out of there before I could embarrass myself any further.
Something caught my eye as I left, perhaps my brain’s attempt to pretend the last few moments hadn’t happened. One of the free newspaper’s articles leapt out and into my brain.
“Great Fire Death Toll Rises to Nine!” the newspaper declared. I picked it up and scanned it over. Building work had uncovered a skeleton near Monument which according to the archaeologists had died during the fire of 1666 that had destroyed most of ‘Old London Town’. The traditional death count had always been eight, for three hundred and fifty years. Now they knew there was at least one more.
I looked over the photographs of the skeleton, smiled to myself and closed the newspaper. Sir Reginald was going to want to hear about this.
*****
When I reached the opticians above which Sir Reginald had lived for as long as I had known him I was surprised to find a freshly painted sign hanging above the private doorway to the upstairs apartments.
“The Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company” it declared in bold white text on a navy background. “Mysteries Solved, Ciphers Broken, Enigmas Unravelled” it added in an italic post-script. Thankfully none of the Londoners paid it a moment’s notice.
Warily I put my key into the lock and heaved my weight against it to push past the pile of letters. There was no resistance when my key turned, the door and I were flung by my own bodyweight into an utterly empty hallway.
Things were getting thoroughly spooky now as I closed the door and locked it tight. It was then I saw the device attached to the letter box. A brass scoop fit tightly around the letter slot and hummed gently, just beyond the range of hearing. It connected to a tube of leather than ran up the stairs and out of sight.
This did not bode well.
I raced up the stairs following the leather pouch to the top and to the door of Sir Reginald’s small attic room. I took a moment to catch my breath and then opened the door.
“Ah, my dear Hannah.” Sir Reginald stood admiring a small steam engine in the old Victorian fireplace. Beside it a great brass bookshelf took up one wall, the most permanent piece of furniture I’d ever seen Sir Reginald install. Letters lay on every shelf, carefully stacked into neat little rows with machine-like precision. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve not been idle since recovering from my little sojourn with convalescence.”
“Is that a–”
“Automatic Letter Sorting Apparatus,” Sir Reginald nodded. “I choose to call her Alsa.” He patted the brass bulb of the steam engine as he might a horse. “Left to right, interesting to uninteresting, top to bottom, past to future.”
This was more obviously the case as I looked it over. The top few shelves had clay tablets, papyrus scrolls and bamboo slats while the bottom was littered with data drives and crystals.
“How… how does it know if they’re interesting?”
“Oh, it’s only a vague estimate. Whether or not I’ve laboured for them previously, whether it includes individuals of note,” Sir Reginald’s look of pride faded for a moment. “As yet I cannot give it cognisance capable of evaluating the intrigue of the mystery. So worry
not, your role has not been supplanted.”
“Uh, I think I’m a little more useful than just a letter opener.” My brows furrowed.
“That was impolitic, I misspoke,” Sir Reginald fixed me with an honest stare. “I enjoy having you bring me mysteries. Alsa might sort the letters but I would rather have no-one else read them. Come, sit down,” he indicated his own arm chair. “Be at ease and I shall make us some tea. And you can tell me all about your last term.”
Sir Reginald busied himself with the kettle and the teapot while I struggled to think of things about my last term which were not just equations. I talked a bit about friends but even that ended swiftly.
“Almost all of them have gone home now, anyway.”
“And you, when will you return to Canada?” Sir Reginald asked as he emptied the kettle into the teapot.
“Oh, it’s far too expensive for me to head back for only a week or two,” I shook my head.
“Pish posh, I’ll see to the particulars.” Sir Reginald returned the kettle and nestled a cosy over the teapot. “We’ll have you on the next…” there was a brief pause while Sir Reginald plumbed for the correct word “aeroplane to Montreal whenever you wish.”
“I don’t want you to go to any trouble on my account.”
“It is no trouble,” Sir Reginald said. “One should never pass up an opportunity to see one’s family.”
As I faltered with the conversation Sir Reginald took up the slack.
“I have endeavoured to improve my situation here,” he announced, placing two cups of tea on a side table between his two chairs. “For too long I have lived in isolation from the rest of the twenty-first century. I have reappraised myself with the value of a guinea, ah, I say again, a pound. I ordered some new books, I visited Wilsons, I even tried to take in a play. It was such drivel I am afraid I walked out in the second act but at least I tried.” Sir Reginald took a sip of tea and then perked up as a memory struck him. “Ah! And I found a new wonder of the modern age!” Sir Reginald got to his feet and went to rummage in a distant cupboard. He returned bearing a familiar red, blue and yellow cylinder. “I found it while exploring one of the so-called super markets. Behold!” He plopped it into my hands.
“Custard powder?” I said, a pit of embarrassment forming in my stomach and working its way down my digestive system.
“I cannot tell you how often I have been in desire of a good custard after a stout meal and yet found myself unable to muster the effort of whisking eggs and boiling vanilla.” Sir Reginald paced with excitement. “But a spoonful of custard powder, a spoonful of sugar and a pan of milk and I can have custard whenever I desire with as little effort as a cup of tea. It is a different pudding, it’s true, but similar enough to scratch the itch of desire.”
“Sir Reginald…” I tried and failed to find a way to broach this delicately. “Custard powder has been around for… at least a hundred years.”
“What?” Sir Reginald froze.
“Probably two hundred…” I said, looking over the tub to avoid his gaze.
“O, for all the wasted years,” Sir Reginald’s excitement faded and he settled down into his chair. “Well, no matter. Such is my punishment for not exploring the world with greater gusto.” With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the irritation building across his brow. “I presume, as you are here, we are to take up our old habits again?”
“If you mean mystery solving, I’m game.”
“Then, pray pluck me a perplexity from Alsa’s new library and let us see what help we may be.”
*****
Sir Reginald never seemed more relaxed than when I visited him at his small rooms at the top of the Optician’s building. Whenever he was outside he insisted on dressing in a full suit that was at least a century out of date, with a waistcoat and pocket watch and gleaming top hat. But inside his rooms he dressed down only to a puffy-sleeved white shirt and let his hair hang free of his hat. Without his hat and suit and cane it was much more obvious he wasn’t any taller than me, with a slight frame and pale skin, as if the sun couldn’t touch him.
Although it had concerned me at first that he’d built a steam-powered letter sorter, the more I thought about it the more it reassured me. Before Sir Reginald had installed Alsa he could have packed up his folding bureau, his small collection of books, his clothes, and been gone in an hour. That had been the case for three years, and now, finally, he seemed to want to stay in the twenty-first century for a while. Outside of his work, at least.
“Canon Walter of Mottisfont Priory begs you lend your expertise to help them search for the spirit that has been haunting their cloisters,” I read the canon’s Latin letter with reasonable confidence. The only confusion arose from the unusual shape of the letters.
“Does the spirit only haunt them at night, haunt one particular area of the priory in particular, and alternate between laughter and screams?” Sir Reginald barely stirred.
“How did you know?”
“Because monks live lonely lives,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “Make a note to write back to the canon and inform him his spirit is in actuality one of the women from the nearby village making love or making coin with one of his monks.”
“Ah.” I made a note to send the reply. “Could it not be one of the monks? Sleep walking maybe?”
“It could be, but if one of the monks it would have been going on for longer and they would recognise his voice,” Sir Reginald took a sip of tea. “A woman is the most likely answer. Let’s open another.”
I put Canon Walter’s parchment aside and reached up on the brass bookshelf for one of the more modern letters. I was trying to trust Alsa’s sorting algorithm but so far very few ‘interesting’ cases had elicited any reaction from Sir Reginald.
“Director Michel of the French National Archives in Paris urges you to meet him with all haste and discretion,” I said. The letter was handwritten in the fluid yet uniform manner of the French. “He hesitates to put the details of the case into this letter in case it falls into the wrong hands. A theft has occurred at the archives and in these dire times any failing of the state could inspire rebellion and he dare not take police away from the riots. The Treaty of Fontainebleau has disappeared from the archives of France.” I checked the date of the letter, thoroughly confused. “It was sent on the twenty-fourth of May 1968.”
“The Treaty of Fontainebleau, clearly a top priority.” Sir Reginald did not commonly use sarcasm. “Without it Napoleon could return from Elba to wreek havoc on an unprotected Europe.”
“I thought Napoleon was exiled to St Helena.”
“The second time.” Sir Reginald bowed his head in acknowledgement. “The first time, the failed time, they sent him to Elba. It should be the folly, not the treaty, of Fontainebleau.” Despite his derisive tone there was a glimmer in his eye. “Put it to one side. I might return to it. I’m curious to know why the director cares greatly enough to come to me, but I think I’d rather brave the Great Fire of London protected from the flames by a shirt made of matchsticks than visit Paris in 1968.”
“Ah, speaking of the Great Fire of London,” I tried to mask my disappointment as I put the Paris case to one side and brought out the newspaper, “I thought you might be interested in this.” I handed over the article for Sir Reginald to read. His eyes scanned down the page quickly.
“Interesting,” Sir Reginald said slowly as he chewed over the details of the find. “I always thought the death count for the fire was unusually low. Although a ninth hardly makes it proportionate to my expectation.” He looked over the picture of the skeleton carefully, turning it slowly as he thought. “What say you to that?” he pointed to the edge of the skeleton’s skull, just behind the ear.
“I’d say it looks like a fracture.” I broke into a smile. I knew Sir Reginald would want to see this. “A fracture made just before he was consumed by the flames.”
“A murder, in fact.” Sir Reginald stared down at the picture hungrily. There was a big juicy mystery t
here, waiting to be solved and no forensic scientist would be able to answer it as clearly as a time traveller. The glimmer faded after a few moments though and he handed the paper back to me. “But the Great Fire of London is an exceptionally dangerous place to visit. Before the fire there was plague and after the fire there is chaos. Let us exhaust our other options first.”
I turned back to the bookshelf, but nothing seemed to interest Sir Reginald, be they requests in cuneiform from Hammurabi’s scribes or holographic data crystals from Emperor Keith, Seven-Keith of his name, king of Mars. Most things Sir Reginald could solve without stirring from his chair.
“I think perhaps I shall have to tweak Alsa’s settings,” Sir Reginald said, casting a dark eye at his new machinery. “She clearly has no idea what makes an interesting mystery.”
Out of growing desperation I plucked a letter at random from one of the more modern shelves. It had a lunar colony postmark complete with a holographic stamp of Neil Armstrong’s face and the date 20th March 2275. I opened it up and read.
“Marlin Arnold of Lucon would like us to find his missing... family,” I said, reading the letter. I was quite pleased this was one of the few addressed not only to Sir Reginald but the full Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company. “Marlin says that by all official record he is the last surviving heir of his family line, but he thinks some went missing.”
“Quite careless to lose an entire branch of the family tree,” Sir Reginald leant forward slightly. “Why doesn’t he believe he is the last one?”
“It doesn’t say,” I said, turning the letter over to check there wasn’t any more on the back. “He says he has done all the research that he can, but he has heard about our... unique... perspective. He is over a hundred now, he says, and doesn’t have much time left to look.”
“It’s painful to be the last person left of your family,” Sir Reginald said. He moved towards the letter slowly, as if pulled by some magnetic force. Finally in a flurry of movement he snatched it up. “Very well, we shall take pity on the old man.” Sir Reginald announced. “We will see what can be done. If any shoots remain on this missing branch of his we can leave him in happiness and if not... well perhaps it will put me in a self-destructive enough mood to want to visit London in ’66.”