The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone

by Geonn Cannon

  To her credit, Dorothy didn’t seem to notice the sidelong glances they received. During the evening she had made arrangements for Adeline’s remains, and she sat with the body until a pair of morticians arrived to take her to the crematorium. Adeline had once mentioned that was how she wanted to leave the world; she wished to become one with the wind and the sea, rather than buried and forgotten somewhere. Trafalgar would receive the ashes and take them back to Africa where they could be spread over the Red Sea.

  Beatrice parked across the street from Threnody’s building. She stayed with the car while Trafalgar and Boone crossed the street.

  Trafalgar said, “I assume you already know the procedure to get inside.”

  Dorothy nodded. “Of course. But we’re not going to follow her instructions. Not today. We don’t want her comfortable for this conversation.” She stopped on the sidewalk and looked both ways before she removed an elegant pair of what looked like brass knuckles from her coat pocket. There was a small suction cup in the center of the device, and a small phial with a thick white liquid inside. She stood close to the front door and pressed the suction cup against the keyhole and thumbed the side of the device. The liquid was forced out through the cup into the keyhole. She twisted her wrist and the construct snapped, existing just long enough to turn the mechanism to release the bolt.

  “A convenient device to have,” Trafalgar said.

  “It’s come in handy once or twice.” Dorothy winked and pushed the door open.

  Threnody’s entry hall was dark, with newspapers covering the windows to let in only the barest hint of light. Scattered envelopes littered the curling tile under their feet like fallen leaves in September, and the paper shuffled as Dorothy stepped forward and pushed open the inner door. Trafalgar had never seen the front rooms of Threnody’s home. She could tell from the way Dorothy scanned the foyer that it was new to her as well.

  The door opened into a wide, empty space filled with furniture hidden under white sheets. They could see into the kitchen where the windows were similarly blocked to keep the sun from intruding. Dorothy removed her brass knuckles and returned them to her pocket. When she brought her hand back out she was holding a sheathed blade.

  Trafalgar moved toward the stairs and peered up to the pitch black second floor. There were no ambient sounds coming from elsewhere in the house; no voices or footsteps, not even the eerie creak of the foundation settling. Dorothy continued toward the kitchen and Trafalgar heard a door open with a moan of warped wood. Trafalgar was aware it was the second unusually empty house they had searched together in as many days, but Threnody’s home had a different feel from Quintel’s. His home had felt completely abandoned, whereas the room they currently stood in was more of a tomb.

  Despite the neglect, there was a certain disturbance to the air that made the hairs on the back of Dorothy’s neck stand up. Someone had passed through this space maybe minutes before their arrival.

  Dorothy returned from the kitchen. “Downstairs is dark,” she said in a whisper. She looked upstairs and gestured with her chin for Trafalgar to lead the way.

  They climbed as quietly as they could, hugging the wall so they wouldn’t step in the creaky middle section of each riser. Dorothy had taken out her revolver at some point, while Trafalgar had her club held tightly in her right hand. There were only three doors on the second floor, and all but one stood open wide to reveal the rooms within. The first room they passed had a drafting table set amid an army of dented filing cabinets and mountains of precipitously stacked papers. The second room was a narrow water closet. At the end of the hallway they flanked the closed door and eyed each other in the darkness. Dorothy was on the side with the knob, and she gripped it lightly so the tongue wouldn’t rattle against the latch. She listened for a moment, then threw the door open and stepped inside.

  “Threnody! We’d like...”

  Her voice died in her throat, and the silence was filled with a desperate shriek from the woman sitting on the edge of the bed. She threw her hands up in front of her face and dove for the plague doctor mask currently sitting on a mannequin’s head. Dorothy retreated a step, her eyes wide as she watched the Crafter shuffle across the room with her shoulders hunched, turning her back so she could slip the leather over her head.

  “I’m sorry,” Dorothy gasped.

  Threnody growled in a voice rougher than Trafalgar had ever heard. “How dare you invade my personal private space? What gives you the right?”

  To Trafalgar’s surprise, the woman seemed to be crying. Dorothy’s face had gone so pale that her freckles stood out like match heads across the bridge of her nose. Dorothy gulped heavily and looked at the floor, suddenly abashed. Threnody settled her mask into position and turned to look at them again. Instead of her normal attire she wore a threadbare nightgown that looked as if it had been mended several times in several places. Her hands were shaking by her sides.

  Trafalgar knew exactly what Dorothy had seen; she’d seen the same thing once, and the image remained burned in her mind. Threnody had been born as Ida Kearney, the daughter of an inventor whose accomplishments she had long ago surpassed. When she was a teenager she was assaulted by a young man. She fought back, and he responded by hitting her in the face with a piece of masonry until she stopped fighting. She survived the attack and crawled back into her father’s lab. She created a new jaw for herself and reconstituted her right cheekbone with bolts and braces. Metal was bolted onto bone, and leather straps served as tendons between her new parts.

  Over the years she had upgraded and refreshed her tech. The result left her functional but the result was far from attractive. The right side of her face above the damage was scarred and lined like a road map. She kept her hair cut short in order to fit the mask more comfortably over her head. Without the mask she looked like a shattered doll which had the scissors taken to it. Adeline once theorized that Threnody wore the mask not to hide her mechanical parts, but to hide the attractive side of her face that was relatively normal. She didn’t want people looking at her and seeing what could have been, so she covered everything with her mask.

  Trafalgar didn’t know how many people had seen under the mask, but that number had just grown by a factor of one.

  “You are banned for life,” Threnody finally said. “Both of you. I will not have my private residence violated in this manner.”

  Dorothy seemed to regain a portion of her control. “We will gladly walk away and never again darken your door, but first we require answers. In the past twenty-four hours, several items you created have been used in a series of murders. Nine people are dead.”

  Threnody was trembling, her body half-turned away and her shoulders hunched as if protecting herself from them. “I do not create floral arrangements, Lady Boone. I create weapons. I assume a great many of them end up bloody.”

  “One of them was used on me,” Dorothy said. “Someone tried to kill me and framed Trafalgar for it. The same thing has been happening all over London. I’m willing to wager a fair amount of the victims also bought weaponry from you in the past. Mummery? Strode? The Keepings?”

  Threnody stared at them. “Someone is targeting my clientele?”

  Trafalgar said, “It is curious that anyone would be knowledgeable about so many people in our profession. How were we found?”

  “An excellent question.” Dorothy had regained her bearings after the shock of seeing Threnody unmasked. “Of course, it would be child’s play to someone with your records.”

  “I only create the weapons. I don’t use them myself. And I would certainly never hand over my records to someone who planned to decimate my paying customers.”

  Dorothy said, “Then help us find who is responsible. We believe his name is Felix Quintel.”

  Threnody hissed and turned away. She took a pair of folded gloves from a drawer and shook her head as she pulled them on. “That blasted man... I knew I shouldn’t accept his commission, but the money was too good. I lost a fair amount of m
oney during the War just paying for my supplies. I thought it would be a good way to build the coffers back up. He told me that he was just building up a surplus. Just in case he needed it in the future.”

  Trafalgar said, “Quintel himself commissioned the devices?”

  “Yes. He sent me a letter describing what he needed and when he needed them to be completed.”

  Dorothy sighed. “And the shadow remains elusive. Did you keep the letter?”

  “I made a copy. I had to refer to it several times to complete the devices.” She gestured for Dorothy and Trafalgar to lead the way out of the room. “I have it downstairs. I’ll show you.” They turned to leave, but Threnody said, “Dorothy. Trafalgar. I am furious with you both for bursting into my home like this. For invading my privacy, which is the one thing I have always...” She caught herself before emotion overtook her. “But if I am responsible for the attempts on your life, then I suppose I can’t hold you in much contempt. I would have done the same in your situation. You are not banned for life, you are not banned at all. It is the least I can do to atone for my part in your near-death experience.”

  “Thank you,” Dorothy said. “And for what it is worth, what I saw... no one will ever know.”

  “I appreciate your discretion. Now...” She gestured again. “Down the stairs... I assume you already found the entrance to my laboratory when you were snooping earlier. Please lead the way, Lady Boone.”

  Dorothy glanced at Trafalgar before they left the bedroom. The haunted look lingered in Dorothy’s face; she knew that the shock of seeing such devastation without warning would take some time to fade. She nodded to Dorothy to indicate she understood and, once he was past, nodded to Threnody to show that she understood as well. Threnody took a deep breath which she exhaled through the filters of her mask before she returned the nod. She stopped at the threshold and watched Dorothy descend the stair, then looked at Trafalgar.

  “Of all the duos who could have burst into my room this morning, never would I have dreamed it would be you and Lady Boone working in concert.”

  “It’s a temporary arrangement, I assure you.”

  Threnody shrugged. Dorothy had stopped at the foot of the stairs to look back at them, but she apparently sensed their conversation was not for her ears and continued to the basement door.

  “Allegiances forged in fire, even among bitter enemies, have a strange way of becoming permanent. It takes great will to open a heart to trust anyone, let alone a person you don’t particularly like. Once those doors have been opened they are exceedingly difficult to close.”

  Trafalgar snorted. “We’re talking about Lady Boone.”

  “We are. You followed Dorothy Boone into this house with your weapons drawn. You provided cover while she advanced. I never thought I would see the day.” She chuckled behind her mask. “It may already be too late for you to close the gates on this one, Miss Trafalgar. You may have to create space in your life for Lady Boone whether you like it or not.”

  She walked past and down the stairs. Trafalgar considered her words for a long moment before she closed the bedroom door and went down after her.

  Chapter Ten

  When Ivy originally staked out the house, she didn’t have to worry about concealing herself from sight. Now that she was visible and partnered with Trafalgar’s lady, they were forced to find a vantage point that wasn’t overly obvious. They broke into another house that looked equally abandoned and set up a little camp on the second floor.

  She wasn’t entirely onboard with the theory that knowing the mysterious house was under surveillance would make Quintel show up, but stranger things had happened. Some men liked an audience. She smirked at the thought and glanced over at Leola. The African woman was extremely still and quiet, almost as if she was a wax figure placed in the chair and left to gather dust. Once in a while she drew a deep breath, not quite a sigh, but enough for Ivy to know she was alive and bored. There was no light to play cards, no pen or paper for a game of noughts and crosses, and the effort of staying awake was difficult enough without worrying what the woman sitting across from her might do if she drifted off. She trusted Dorothy, to a degree, but Dorothy hadn’t trusted Trafalgar until that morning. As far as she was concerned she was on a stakeout with the enemy.

  When the darkness became infused with color that slowly brightened with the oncoming dawn, Ivy could see Leola’s features more clearly. The woman didn’t seem to have any trouble staying awake. She looked as alert as she had when they first broke into the house and started watching. Ivy needed some sort of stimulation to get through the next hour or so, and finally she cracked and broke the silence.

  “So how long have you known Trafalgar?”

  “Since I was a child.”

  “Oh. So you’re childhood friends.”

  Leola said, “No.”

  Ivy waited for her to elaborate. After a moment she sighed and looked out the window again. It was difficult to see in the darkness; the street had no exterior lighting so she was forced to rely on the ambient glow from Quintel’s neighbors. In the time she’d spent watching the house she had become familiar with the shape of the neighborhood; the bow of that tree’s branches and the low brick wall that enclosed that home’s lawn. She would be able to see better if she removed her goggles, but she hadn’t bothered to detail the makeup around her eyes. People tended to panic when they saw ragged open craters where her eyes should be.

  “I’ve known Dorothy for years myself. We don’t always agree with each other, but sometimes it’s the fighting that makes life worth living.”

  “Hm.”

  “You don’t say much, do you?”

  Leola looked at her. “I lost my friend.”

  “Right. Sorry about that.”

  Leola looked outside again. “The existence of this house proves to you that Felix Quintel is a real person, not an organization using his name as a title.”

  Ivy nodded. “That’s right. Dorothy and Trafalgar may think he’s just a figurehead, but I’m not so sure. He has followers, people who do his bidding and present a public face to the world. He has his maid picking up groceries for him.”

  “His compost heap was rather full.”

  “Mm-hmm. I suppose she could just dump everything out.”

  Leola drew a finger along her bottom lip. “His maid is definitely a woman? Not a man in disguise?”

  Ivy smiled. “I thought the same thing, but nope. She moves like a woman, but not in a contrived way. It seems too natural to be a put-on. Plus I managed to get up close without her knowing. She’s definitely as female and as old as she pretends. She’s just a woman who, according to Lady Boone, should be fired if her job is to clean up the house.”

  “It’s Felix Quintel’s house, and yet he is never seen entering or leaving. It’s his home and yet no one seems to live there.” She lifted her chin slightly and raised an eyebrow. “It’s Felix Quintel’s house, but he doesn’t live there.”

  “You’ve got the high points, yep.”

  “The man who took Trafalgar from her home twenty years ago is represented in a picture in the one furnished room in the house, the house is empty, and Felix Quintel is the purported owner.” She worked her jaw back and forth as she stared out into the darkness. She seemed to be talking in circles, but it was obviously helping her put the puzzle together in her mind. “This is Felix Quintel’s home, but he has not arrived to claim it yet. The guards protect it for his eventual arrival. The maid brings food for the same reason. When a week goes by and he has not come, the food is put in the compost heap and fresh groceries are brought in.”

  Ivy leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “So where is he?”

  “The man in the portrait, Solomon. He attempted to use Trafalgar’s body to summon an entity from the netherworld. She was to be its host, but she thwarted his attempt. The stone with which he was using to draw the being to her body was lost in the Gulf of Aden. He gave his life trying to retrieve it. The house belongs to
a man rich enough to build these devices and pay assassins, and yet his garden is overgrown and his home is falling to disrepair.”

  Ivy started to say something but didn’t want to risk interrupting the other woman’s train of thought. She seemed to be close to making the final connection, and if doing so got them out of the blasted room, then more the better.

  “The group to which Solomon belongs is intent on bringing a creature of great power into this world. Trafalgar foiled their plans all those years ago without even realizing it. To her it was simply self-preservation. Perhaps that was simply a trial run, as I cannot imagine them putting their messiah into the body of a young female child from Abyssinia. She took away their magic stone and with it their ability to summon a creature to a particular body.” She closed her eyes and held her hand out in front of her as if rearranging pieces of a puzzle. “The War is over. Travel between countries is easier than it was a year ago. Quintel’s men now have the ability to go wherever it is they must be to perform this ritual. But they may not have the means. The War was expensive for everybody, plus there is the cost of maintaining this house and its servants all this time. They may not have the funds to travel. They will require funding, a patron who will hire them for the expedition.”

  Ivy said, “And the best way to ensure they are the team chosen is to eliminate anyone else who might take the job. Lady Boone, Trafalgar, the Keepings...”

  Leola opened her eyes and looked at Ivy. “Quintel wanted a monopoly on expeditions. He wanted to be the only option when it came time to fund the trip.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because the time has finally come for another attempt to finish what was started with Trafalgar. They cannot afford to do it themselves. But they can afford to wipe out the competition here in London so anyone with the means for an international expedition has no choice but to come to them. Whoever this Solomon fellow was intended great things for Trafalgar. He told her she would have Power, and that she would lead everyone on the boat. It was the only thing that saved her life. He was summoning his leader. Felix Quintel does not exist because he has not yet ascended from the depths. This home is set up so he will have someplace to go immediately upon waking.”