by Morris, Tee
“Remind me why we are going to apologise again?”
“Not ‘we,’ ” she said, poking him with one finger. “Me. I was very rude to Wellington, and perhaps, just perhaps, he is . . . right.”
At that Douglas jerked to a stop. “By Jove—did hell itself freeze over or did Miss Eliza D. Braun say she was wrong?”
He was trying to be funny, but she realised that he did perhaps have a point. However, she was certainly not going to admit it, so she now wagged the finger she’d assaulted him with in front of his eyes. “Ah . . . I said he was right, not that I was wrong!”
“Ah well,” he sighed theatrically, “still the same old Eliza then.”
“I am not going to dignify that with a reply.” She tucked her hand around his elbow, while with the other she withdrew the scrap of paper with Wellington’s address on it. In all their months together she had never actually seen the Archivist’s home, yet he’d been to her apartments many times. It was curious . . . and that bolt from the blue made Eliza increase her pace. She was actually pulling Douglas along with her.
Hampstead was a nice enough location—even if it was not very metropolitan. The houses here though did have their own small gardens, and oozed a certain gentility that spoke of good money earned in good time and not too rushed. Tree-lined streets and tranquility. It was not the place she would have imagined her colleague to inhabit. He’d always seemed so much part of the Archives.
Living a life in Hampstead said that Wellington was doing well as an archivist. The thought idly crossed her mind that perhaps she should ask for an increase in her own salary.
“This is it.” As Eliza spoke, she examined the redbrick building sitting behind the ironwork fence, and then the small garden. “I would never have considered that Wellington would like topiary.”
Douglas stared at the neatly carved hedge leading up to the door. “Seems a bit of an odd bird, Eliza.”
“In the best possible way,” she shot back as she unlatched the gate and pulled him up the gravel path, “Now let’s go in and apologise.”
Wellington answered the doorbell himself—no maid, clockwork or otherwise. His jacket was off, his collar loosened, and a patchwork apron tied around his waist. There was something endearing about actually catching him, the amateur tinker, in mid-work. This was more like it—exactly how she imagined Wellington Books off the clock. Also it was one of the few times she’d seen him in a state of undress—excepting the time they had masqueraded as husband and wife. That had been quite a different kind of exciting experience all together.
“Miss Braun.” It was not lost on her that he had retreated into some formality. “I was not aware you knew where I lived.”
She waved the piece of paper before her triumphantly. “Even Shillingworth has to take tea sometime. So I managed this feat yesterday. You didn’t notice as you were still punishing yourself.”
Her colleague’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose I should have paid better attention.” He spotted Douglas. “And I see you’ve brought company—fortunately, I just put the kettle on.” He opened the door wider and ushered them in. Once formality had been dispensed with, he led them to the front parlour.
It was not what would be called formal, or indeed tidy. At least at first glance.
Douglas waited until Wellington had disappeared down the hallway before muttering to Eliza, “I told you so—an odd bird.”
Carefully she strolled around the room examining every piece of it, like it was a crime scene. Tidy piles of papers were stacked against the wall, none of them standing higher than her knee. Every surface on the dressers and table was covered with cogs and gears, or half-assembled pistons. Pinned against the walls were diagrams and schematics. She was no expert but this one looked like some kind of heavy cannon assembly. Presiding over all of this was a huge, fluffy tabby cat. He sat atop the largest stack and watched these two interlopers with bright yellow eyes. His expression precluded Eliza from daring to pet him, but as she passed by he began to purr as if to comfort her.
In between all this strangeness were semblances of a normal life. The room was littered with plenty of tiny framed landscapes. She recognised the Isle of Skye and Brighton—as well as some representations of places that could only be in Africa.
Finally at the conclusion of her reconnaissance, Eliza reached the fireplace. Hanging above the iron grate was a magnificent portrait—its grandness totally out of place in the simple room. It was the only image of a person on display. It showed a beautiful lady, her back turned to the viewer, her face caught in profile. Around the ornate gilt frame was hung black ribbon. Eliza didn’t need any plaque to tell her what she could recognise immediately. This was Wellington’s mother. He had the same strong nose and her hazel eyes.
While Eliza was contemplating that, she heard her colleague’s footsteps in the hallway. Quickly she spun away. Douglas, apparently to feign indifference or to cover up his awkwardness, went to pet the huge cat. When it flattened its ears and hissed at him, he fairly leapt back.
“Don’t mind Archimedes.” Wellington came in balancing a tray with the accoutrements of tea making, “He makes a lot of fuss and bother, but he wouldn’t hurt anything bigger than a rat.”
The tabby stared at them as if to deny that reassurance. The Archivist laid out cups and saucers, and began to pour. Though he might have little care for the décor of his house, Eliza noticed that the tea service was of the finest bone china.
“I even managed to locate up some biscuits.” Wellington shoved the offerings nearer, and then poured some cream into a saucer and put it down on the floor. Archimedes dropped down and began drinking with the elegance of a member of the aristocracy. The Archivist looked oddly nervous, and it seemed that perhaps Eliza had not made the right choice in coming here.
Finally, she could no longer take it. “Look, Welly, I didn’t go to all this trouble to track you down to make everything difficult for you. I needed to tell you something and I couldn’t wait until Monday.”
Somehow in his own house Wellington was more formidable—far more so than in the Archives. He waited while she considered the best words to use. However, there were no others. “So perhaps you were right.”
He kept silent—tilting his head and concentrating on stirring.
“All right then—you were right. I don’t think Dottie did it.”
Barely were the words out of her mouth, than Wellington’s house rocked. For a second the thought crossed her mind that her admission had changed the fabric of reality. The piles of work in progress tilted alarmingly, and the pictures on the walls slanted. Archimedes looked up from his careful drinking of the cream, blinked, and then resumed his snack. The rest of the occupants of the room were not nearly so blasé about it.
Douglas leapt to his feet. “By Jove, what was that?”
“No need to worry!” Wellington exclaimed, in a tone that had the completely opposite effect, and then bolted out of the room and back down the hallway.
“Stay here,” Eliza barked to Douglas as she darted after her colleague. “In case this whole thing goes pear-shaped.”
The house was settling back on its foundations like a lady with a bad case of indigestion, but now there was smoke oozing up through the floorboards. Eliza shouted out his name, but Wellington snatched up a bucket of something and dashed down a set of stairs.
Eliza followed in his wake, though she had to take care because the smoke was so thick in here she could barely see where her foot was going. A whirring sound filled the house now, like the engine of a dirigible. As she stood poised on the last stair, the haze began to clear and she could finally see where she was.
Strings of yellow lights hung suspended from the ceiling, which gave the underground space the air of a mining operation. Which it somewhat was, by the look of it. Thick iron beams held up the house above them, and that was surely not an original feature to the property. Once again there were stacks of paraphernalia and a laden desk, but in addition there were a
number of curious-shaped objects under oilskin cloth.
While Eliza marvelled at that, Wellington was busy in front of a whirring fan device that was responsible for sucking the smoke out of the room. Since he was preoccupied, she decided to pad around the room instead, and find out what she could about her co-worker. It didn’t seem like he had even noticed she’d followed him, and the rattle of the machine drowned out the sound of her footsteps.
Eliza knew that the Archivist had an interest in tinkering, but had always assumed it was a gentlemanly hobby. The scale of what she saw now disproved that little notion. The downstairs workshop was packed full of tools that the clankertons at the Ministry would have been proud of. They might have considered Wellington a novice, but they would have been wrong.
As she examined the workbench she found a real surprise: a half-assembled Gatling gun. Eliza shot a look over her shoulder but Wellington was still working the levers of the fan device. “Quite the contrary man,” she muttered to herself before moving on.
Against the wall she found a small shelf where a row of medals hung. At first she thought they might have been his father’s or grandfather’s, but she read with some surprise that they were for the Boer War. She even recognised the Queens South Africa medal—though she was not well-enough versed in military regalia to identify the various clasps on it. In previous conversations he had touched on the fact he’d been in the army, but she understood his reluctance to discuss it. However he certainly had not continued military neatness.
Her gaze travelled on across his workbench. It was scattered with papers and notebooks. On them were the kind of mathematical workings and formulas that she’d seen in the research division, and on Blackwell and Axelrod’s desk. Wellington had been hard at work on something. None of it made any sense to her, but she was impressed anyway.
In the centre of the room was a large lump of a device that took up most of the space, and running in front of it was a ramp angling up. Whatever Wellington was creating down here, he wanted to roll it to the surface at some stage. Cautiously, she lifted the corner of the oilskin. She caught a glimpse of a wheel and the front of some kind of velo-motor when she ran out of time.
“Eliza!” Both of them jumped when Wellington’s hand clamped down on her wrist. She dropped the corner of the tarpaulin. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “Forgive me—but when a house shakes like that and smoke starts coming from every orifice I think you might need a helping hand.”
“Oh tosh.” Wellington waved at her. “It was a little experiment I left brewing—that’s all. No need for alarm.”
“I am so glad you don’t ‘brew’ experiments in the Archives.”
The smile he shot her was both wicked and rather enjoyable. “As far as you know.” He turned back and flicked off a row of levers. The fan shut off and conscious thought was once again possible.
“This is quite impressive, Welly.” Eliza tucked her hands into her pockets, lest she be tempted to touch more things. “You should bring Axelrod and Blackwell down here.” Naturally, she was messing with his mind, but this whole downstairs revelation had shaken her, and she needed time to acclimatise.
As an answer Wellington snorted. “I really don’t think they would appreciate it.”
“Well, you are certainly beavering away on your off hours. And by the by, I thought you disliked guns! Have you been withholding information from me?” She pointed accusingly to the dismantled Gatling on his workbench.
“I dislike using them,” he corrected her tartly, “that doesn’t mean I don’t like the engineering challenge of working with them.”
Her fingers trailed over the remaining pieces he had laid out. They were the mountings for the gun to be attached to a vehicle. “A Gatling gun on a velo-motor? Remind me not to cross your path when out on the town.”
“Please, Eliza.” He produced another oilskin and threw it over the pieces. “This is my domain. I don’t come into your house and poke about.”
“No, you do worse than that—you make a mess.”
In the low light it was hard to tell if Wellington was blushing, but he turned away.
Perhaps she had taken her ribbing too far. Eliza placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, but it seems to me you are in the wrong place, Welly. You should be in Research and Design—not the Archives.”
Her colleague fixed her with a hard look. “I did originally apply for the position of junior inventor, but was not successful. The Director said my talents were best served belowstairs.” It didn’t take a trained field agent to hear the trace of bitterness in his voice. It certainly explained a few of the barbed comments he had directed in Blackwell and Axelrod’s direction. “Besides,” he went on, “did you think the creation of the analytical engine was a one-off event?”
A shrug conveyed her confusion. “Truthfully, I thought it was something all Archivists could do. I never claimed to be knowledgeable in these things.”
His laugh filled the workshop. “I never imagined I would ever hear that! Miss Eliza D. Braun admitting she was wrong. I wish I had some recording device running.”
“So what exactly are you doing down here, Welly?” She waved her hands to take in the full scope of his endeavours.
“Several things at once. I like to work that way.” The Archivist pointed to the workbench strewn with papers. “I’m working on some calculations on how much power it would take to snatch a person out of thin air, and from there I should be able to determine the range of a device.”
Eliza cocked her head. “How can you possibly do that when you don’t know what kind of machine they are using—or if they are using a machine at all?”
When he touched his nose in a conspiratorial fashion, his grin was blinding. “Let’s just say that being the Archivist at the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences gives me access to a few pieces of research that make all the difference in the world.” He frowned. “Still, it is giving me some difficulty, but I think I am near a breakthrough.”
Then Wellington pointed to the still smoking test tubes. “That is my own private experiment into . . . well, it’s not connected with the suffragist case.”
When Eliza opened her mouth, he waved his hand to include the large velo-motor. “And these things too—but this”—he tapped the circular device—“is allowing me to examine the film the Protectors were kind enough to provide. I must say that despite your dislike for Miss Lawrence, she has done an admirable job of filming the occurrences.”
“A pity she has not done nearly so well when protecting the ladies.” Eliza sniffed.
“Please—put aside your dislike for Miss Lawrence,” Wellington snapped. “Especially since she possessed the wherewithal to covertly film these committee movies.” He waved in the air towards his massive worktable as he turned to what appeared to be a modified kinetoscope. “Now have a seat and watch what I’ve discovered so far.”
Eliza grabbed a nearby stool and waited as Wellington fiddled with the carnival attraction. “Exactly how am I to watch the footage when I am over here and the kinetoscope is—”
Her words caught in her throat as, in the centre of a bare patch on the workshop wall, materialised shimmering images of London’s suffragist leaders.
“Bloody brilliant, Welly,” Eliza whispered as the figures moved silently along the wall.
“Not as hard as I thought, modifying it to project an image on a surface. A bit like a phantasmagoria, if you get the light source just—”
“Welly, hush,” she said, watching the film intently.
She watched as the women continued their discussions, any of their gestures appearing faster than normal. Then their expressions changed, one or two seeming to sniff the air. Then bolts of electricity flashing about, a blinding light, and then, a committee member suddenly gone. With no sound, the pandemonium ensuing afterward made the hair on the back of Eliza’s neck stand on end.
The image then slowed to a halt. “This is marked as the disappeara
nce of Mildred Cady. She was the Treasurer.” The images then suddenly reversed. Eliza noted Wellington slowly turning a crank connected to the kinetorama. “I have to do this slowly lest the film snap. I have to keep an eye on the film’s tension and temperature.”
“Of course,” Eliza said, nodding slightly. She couldn’t hide her fascination with this creation of Wellington’s. Ingenious.
The film started again, and Mildred Cady—a woman of short and stout build but, as seen in the footage, quite a formidable speaker—took the floor. Perhaps she was speaking her mind on a motion made during a previous public meeting or between the committee members themselves, but she held the ladies’ rapt attention. Then came the distraction. Eliza assumed it was the smell just before the abduction. The lightning. A flash. And Mildred was gone.
The images then recessed back as Wellington spoke, “I have timed it in each of the abductions where someone reacts, obviously, to the smell of electricity. It’s roughly thirty seconds between that tell and the incident.” He began playback and then paused the film. “I need more time to review the footage, but I have noticed something already.” He stepped into the projected image and tapped on a seated image of a dark-skinned individual. “Miss Culpepper is present at every meeting.”
“That’s all? Welly, most of the committee members are there at every meeting. I am there practically every meeting too—am I a suspect?”
“This is different.” Wellington turned and looked at the wall with the flickering image from Cady’s capture. “There’s something . . . wrong about her though. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Eliza was used to working on listening to her instincts—or had been when she’d been a full agent, not some half-baked paper shuffler. If this were Hill or Lochlear or even Campbell, she might have put more store by it. Wellington Thornhill Books was not a field agent. He was an Archivist, very good at his job, but not a field agent. So, she patted his arm. “We’ll need more than that to arrest a vaunted member of high society.”