The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  Priscilla shrugged. “You’ll work something out,” she said. “Besides, you know I haven’t said yes to anybody yet!”

  As Jean groaned, the door to the study opened, and the earnest freckled face of Miss Hopkins appeared in the crack.

  “Nan, are you there?” she said.

  “Yes, of course, Miss Hopkins,” Nan said.

  “Miss Henchman would like to see you at once in her study,” the teacher said.

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Don’t worry,” Miss Hopkins added, though her voice faltered. “Nan’s done nothing wrong.”

  After Nan had left, Miss Hopkins came all the way into the room and shut the door behind her.

  “Girls, I’m afraid something very dreadful has happened,” she said.

  Sophie thought she looked almost as bad as the day she’d told them about the bombing in Princes Street.

  “It’s one of Nan’s brothers, isn’t it?” she said, though she could not explain how she knew.

  “Yes,” said Miss Hopkins simply. “Her oldest brother, Sam, has been killed in a skirmish in the Urals. Nan’s father’s downstairs with Miss Henchman; they’ve decided it’ll be best for her to stay at school until the day of the funeral. Her mother’s not taking it too well.”

  “How awful,” Priscilla said. All the color had left her face and her hand had gone straight to Jean’s. They sat next to each other, looking much younger than before. “What can we do to help?”

  “Treat her gently,” said the teacher. “Encourage her to see Matron if she’s not eating or sleeping properly. Beyond that, I don’t know that there’s anything we can do.”

  “Will we have permission to go to the funeral?” Priscilla asked. Sophie suddenly and desperately hated her for always knowing the right thing to say.

  “Well,” said Miss Hopkins, her voice trailing off, “I don’t know….”

  “Surely we’ll be allowed!” Jean cried.

  “It’s not that, Jean,” the teacher said, clearing her throat. It’s just that until the army returns the—er—the remains, they won’t be able to have a funeral. It may be some time.”

  Having silenced them entirely, she asked if they needed anything. They said no, and she sighed, shook her head, and left.

  Lights-out had come and gone before Nan crept back into the room. As she undressed and changed into her nightgown, Sophie decided to speak.

  “Nan?”

  The other girl didn’t answer, but her muffled sobs kept them all awake for a long time.

  In the morning Nan’s eyes were red and swollen, though she insisted she felt fine and said a soldier’s highest honor was to give his life for his country.

  Breakfast was sad and quiet. Everyone knew what had happened, and several girls came up to Nan to tell her how sorry they were about her brother.

  “Priscilla?” Jean said just before history class was due to start.

  “What?”

  “Don’t let’s argue anymore.”

  “All right.”

  They shook hands on it as Miss Chatterjee came into the room to begin the lesson. But the day went on feeling strange and sad, and even Sophie had to fiddle with her handkerchief and pretend she’d got a bit of dust in her eye when the teacher spoke a few words of condolence to Nan.

  As the bell rang and Sophie began to put away her notes, she looked up to see Nan at her side.

  “Sophie, I need you to do something for me,” she said. “Something really important.”

  “Anything,” said Sophie.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “We all know what really happened last week in class,” Nan said. “That weird drawing in Mr. Petersen’s class, and the stuff you typed off the cylinder for Miss Botham. You’re a medium, Sophie, aren’t you? You’ve been hearing the voices of the dead.”

  It didn’t take psychic powers to predict what Nan was going to say next.

  “The thing I can’t stand,” Nan said, now crying outright despite the fact that they were absolutely surrounded by other girls putting away their things and pretending not to listen, “is knowing I never said good-bye to him. On Sam’s last leave, he was only home for forty-eight hours, and my parents didn’t want to break up my school week. Oh, if only I’d seen him then! But Sophie, you’ll be able to fix things. You’ll help me speak with him, won’t you?”

  Then, when Sophie said nothing: “Sophie, you promised! Of course I won’t blame you if we try it and it doesn’t work. I know you can’t always control these things. But I must speak with him one more time, if it’s humanly possible, and say a proper good-bye to him.”

  Was this Sophie’s punishment for dabbling in the spirit world? All her old ambivalence about the supernatural flooded into her mind. It couldn’t be right to want to talk to a loved one after he or she died, it simply couldn’t.

  But Sophie had made Nan a solemn promise. With an awful sense of foreboding, she said they’d talk about it later.

  “You’ll do it, though, won’t you?”

  “Oh, all right,” said Sophie, though she couldn’t see any good coming of it, and the thought of opening herself up again to spirits made her quite sick.

  Nan just pressed her hand and sobbed.

  THIRTY-TWO

  JUST BEFORE LUNCH Sophie slipped away from the other girls to meet Mikael at the school’s side entrance. He was at the door already, wearing a cap and a navy blue shirt and trousers and carrying a brown paper parcel; he could easily have been mistaken for a delivery boy, which was exactly the idea.

  Sophie led him through the halls to Mr. Petersen’s classroom. The teacher wasn’t there yet, though they could hear him talking on the telephone in the office at the back. Sophie had arranged to be there earlier than usual because it suited Mikael better.

  They heard him put down the receiver. Sophie and Mikael looked at each other.

  “I still can’t believe it’s really him,” Mikael whispered. “Do you think—?”

  Then Mr. Petersen appeared in the doorway. He saw Mikael at once. His face went white and then red, and the two of them rushed into each other’s arms.

  Seeing them together like that made Sophie inexplicably angry. She could hardly remember why she liked either of them in the first place.

  “Mr. Petersen!” she said.

  “What is it, Sophie?” he asked.

  He and Mikael were smiling like idiots; Sophie sourly reflected that they hadn’t even thanked her for helping them to be reunited.

  “There are things I need to ask you about,” she said.

  Mikael looked at her curiously. Could he tell how angry she was?

  “Arne, you must tell me the truth about this first,” he said urgently to Mr. Petersen, reaching into his trousers and pulling out the pocketknife. “I found—”

  “My pocketknife!” said Mr. Petersen. “But how—?”

  “It had fallen into the back of the couch in the suite at the Balmoral,” Mikael said. “The suite where the medium was killed.”

  “What?” said Mr. Petersen.

  They had all taken seats around the lab table at the back of the classroom, and Sophie’s teacher looked genuinely horrified.

  “I misplaced that knife a month ago,” he said, “but however can you know it turned up at the scene of the crime? I certainly never heard a word from the police, though I wondered whether they would contact me; I had several appointments with Mrs. Tansy in the weeks preceding her disappearance, though I was as surprised as anyone else to hear of her death.”

  Sophie wanted to ask about the appointments, but Mikael spoke first.

  “I was there,” he said stubbornly. “That’s how I know about the knife.”

  “There at the hotel? You mean, when the medium was killed?” said Mr. Petersen. “That can’t be!”

  Sophie could see they were going to go on at cross-purposes if someone didn’t set them straight, so she gave a clear short explanation of how Mikael had come to be at the hot
el.

  Mr. Petersen looked terribly worried.

  “The knife must have got there by way of the Veteran,” he said. “You know the man I mean, Sophie, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve ever been so horrified in my life as when I saw him attack the minister. After that, it was less surprising to learn he’d also been implicated in the death of the medium. But it still sends shivers down my spine to think of my own involvement with him. I can’t quite forgive myself—I felt awful when I heard about how he died, and I fear I may bear some of the responsibility for the crimes he committed along the way.”

  “How so?” Sophie asked.

  Before Mr. Petersen could answer her, Mikael asked another question. “Why did the Veteran want to implicate you? He could have framed anyone he wanted. Was there something about your dealings with him that might have given him a dislike for you?”

  “He knew I worked for the Nobel Consortium,” Mr. Petersen said thoughtfully. “Hmm…I must mull that one over.”

  “But why are you here?” Sophie burst in. “Are you still working for Nobel? Why did you meet with the medium and the Veteran?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” said Mr. Petersen, sounding quite annoyingly apologetic. “Confidentiality. Sorry.”

  There were all sorts of other things Sophie wanted to learn too. It would drive her mad if he wouldn’t answer any of her questions!

  “Did you pay off our old chemistry teacher so that you could take her place?” she asked.

  “Why do you say that?” said Mr. Petersen warily.

  “Jean and I spotted her in the electric showroom in Princes Street, still using her maiden name and spending money like water. It was clear she hadn’t got married at all, but on the other hand she had much more money than before. It was most odd. Then I accidentally saw the travel visas in your passport—I do apologize, I couldn’t help it, I was looking for something to write you a note with and it was right there in your desk drawer. I couldn’t understand why you’d been traveling back and forth so often to Stockholm without saying anything. It made me wonder whether your job here was just a cover for something else.”

  “Damned fool!” said Mr. Petersen. “Sorry, Sophie; not you. Miss Rawlins is really the most impossible woman. I’m not surprised to hear of her behaving so foolishly. Well, that’s another little job for me….”

  “You’re not going to kill her?” Sophie asked, aghast. She didn’t like Miss Rawlins, but that didn’t mean it was all right to talk about disposing of her as one might an unattractive garden shrub.

  “Kill her?” Mr. Petersen looked quite horrified. “Certainly not, Sophie. Whatever must you think of me? Oh dear, I see you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick completely. God, what a mess!”

  He jumped out of his seat and began pacing back and forth. “You’ve got no reason to trust me, Sophie,” he said. “But by the most solemn oaths possible, I swear I mean you no harm. On the contrary, your safety’s vitally important to me.”

  “What about the bombings?” Sophie asked. It was her deepest darkest worry, especially now that the Nobel connection had been proven. “If you had anything to do with those deaths, we can’t keep it secret.”

  Mikael might be satisfied simply to know his brother hadn’t been at the murder scene, but Sophie couldn’t let things go so easily, even if it was her beloved Mr. Petersen.

  “Sophie, I swear to you on my mother’s head that I’m not involved in any way with the Brothers of the Northern Liberties,” said Mr. Petersen. “I’d never intentionally harm another human being. I’m deeply committed to pacifism. Look, I can see why you’re suspicious. Those entry stamps in the passport must have been a bit of a facer! Indeed, I must confess that I was involved with one of the bombings, the one at St. Giles’ Cathedral.”

  “The one where nobody was killed?” Sophie said, confused. “But—”

  “I was asked to find the device and, if possible, to defuse it without detonating it. Unfortunately the bomb went off as soon as I sent in the first mechanical probe. It wasn’t supposed to work that way, but at least it prevented the bomb’s going off in the middle of morning services, as it was meant to.”

  “A mechanical probe?” Sophie asked, curious despite herself.

  Mr. Petersen looked for a moment as if he would like to indulge her curiosity. Then he shook his head.

  “Another time, Sophie, I’ll tell you all about the latest antiterror gadgets,” he said. “All you need to know now is that I was there with the full knowledge of the police—indeed, at their request. They contacted the Nobel Consortium, and someone there told them I was nearest by.”

  “Oh,” said Sophie. “Mr. Petersen—”

  She was going to ask why he had taken the teaching job in the first place, but she stopped when Mikael started chuckling quietly. She supposed he thought it was funny, the way she kept calling his brother by his formal name.

  “Stop it!” she said, so annoyed she actually reached across—she couldn’t believe she did it—and whacked him in the stomach, a hard backhanded blow that took him completely by surprise. He reached over and grabbed her arm and forced it back until she begged him to stop.

  Now it was Mr. Petersen laughing.

  “I can see you two are old friends,” he said. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Mikael!”

  He clapped Mikael on the shoulder, and the two of them looked at each other affectionately.

  At that moment Sophie had a revelation—a horrible revelation. She let her arm go limp so suddenly that Mikael was put off balance and couldn’t stop her from snatching it back from him. She didn’t want to touch him; she couldn’t let him touch her for even a moment longer.

  For months Sophie had believed herself to be in love with Mr. Petersen. Everyone knew about it and joked about it, and even Sophie had grown comfortable with the idea. Of course Mr. Petersen would never fall in love with Sophie—that was a given.

  But Sophie wasn’t jealous of the love she could see in Mr. Petersen’s face as he looked at his younger brother. It was Mikael whose affections she begrudged; she could hardly bear seeing even an iota of love in his eyes for someone else, even for his brother.

  It was really Mikael Sophie had been in love with all along! Oh, how awful, how shameful; it was the most humiliating—the most unforgivable—thing she had ever done. Falling in love with her best friend!

  The other two were looking at her curiously. She couldn’t say a word to explain why she’d gone silent. She was briefly consumed with a powerful and irrational dislike for both of them. Why couldn’t they have stayed in Denmark where they belonged?

  “Forgive me for saying so, Sophie,” said Mr. Petersen, after a quick look at his watch, “but I have a strong feeling you’re going to be in very hot water if you don’t make haste to lunch.”

  “Oh, golly,” said Sophie. At least it was an excuse to leave right away.

  “Give me a week to sort things out,” the teacher said. “That’s all I ask. Then I’ll tell you everything I can.”

  “But Mikael will have gone by then!”

  “I’m traveling to Denmark next week in any case,” said Mr. Petersen. “I’ll explain everything to him then; it will be easier that way.”

  But when would Sophie get to see Mikael?

  “Away with you now,” said Mr. Petersen. “Don’t worry, Sophie, it will all come right in the end, with a bit of luck.”

  “Come to tea on Thursday,” Mikael called after her as she left. “I’ll tell Arne now about everything else that’s happened, and then you and I can talk on Thursday about what to do next.”

  She waved a hand to show she’d heard, but didn’t look back. Probably they would enjoy having some time alone together. It wasn’t hard to tell when she was superfluous. Realizing she was in love with Mikael only drove home how peripheral Sophie was to his life. She would have to be scrupulous in making sure he caught no glimpse of her feelings; she would rather die than be exposed.

  THIRTY-THREE


  THAT EVENING SOPHIE plowed steadily through an enormous pile of homework without letting anything distract her. Schoolwork was nothing compared to everything else that had happened recently.

  Jean and Priscilla had yet to resolve their argument, but agreed to put their differences aside. Nan herself spent the evening in bed with her history textbook. She could hardly have turned more than a page or two, but if she was crying, she did so very quietly.

  They all talked softly in bed until eleven o’clock, much too keyed up to feel in the least sleepy. Once the last inspection had come and gone and the corridor lights been put out, they joined Nan on her bed, Priscilla wearing a very fancy pair of blue silk pajamas, the other three in the distinctly less glamorous regulation ones.

  “Did you find the things I asked for?” Sophie asked Nan, speaking softly, though not actually whispering. Nan’s bereavement would keep them from being punished for breaking the lights-out rule only so long as their offenses were not too glaring. Quiet voices and a single candle would be safest.

  In silence Nan laid a series of objects on the bed: a snapshot of Sam with his arm around Nan’s shoulders; a little double-action revolver, formerly Sam’s, usually kept in the rifle-club cabinet and illegally borrowed for the evening; an Azerbaijani woven bracelet Sam had sent his sister for Christmas; half a dozen postcards.

  “Don’t you need anything else?” Jean asked Sophie. “Some incense, or a crystal ball?”

  “I’ve got a powder compact with a mirror in it,” Priscilla suggested, “and there’s also my transistor radio.”

  Her willingness to contribute her most treasured possession (Priscilla’s father had obtained the radio from one of the men who had actually invented the transistor) set Nan off into tears again.

  “We won’t need anything like that,” Sophie said, trying to project confidence. “We’ll just use these things as a way of connecting with Sam.”

  Sophie didn’t want Nan to hear her brother’s voice directly. There was something upsetting in the sound of a disembodied voice even when it didn’t belong to someone you loved, and hearing Sam’s spirit talk in its present thinned-out, incoherent state could do Nan no possible good.