Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy)

by Appleton, Robert

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Meredith. To be honest, I just want the old man back. I miss him.”

  She sighed, placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and watched the solitary dirigible sail away into the never-ending gloom. “I know the feeling, brother.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Confluence

  From the handsome ribbons streaming from the open windows of slow-moving automobiles, and the passengers’ impeccable and colourful attire, Meredith knew she was overtaking a convoy of party guests. She raced along the ring-road, her speedometer needle never lower than thirty-five miles per hour. She’d bought her Mulcaster Mk. III second-hand from Jessop’s garage the other side of Vincey Park, for under two hundred pounds, a good price for a racer, and even better in that Jessop was letting her pay in monthly instalments.

  The journey from London had been a belter, her best drive yet—she’d taken the long way round via Dover and Brighton, hogging the coast at full throttle, cornering the Mulcaster like crazy as its huge rubber tyres tossed up dust and loose gravel behind her. Being exposed to the elements hadn’t helped, though, and her clothes were in a sorry state, mucked up beyond recognition; a good thing she’d stopped off at her old home to freshen up and change into her party gown.

  Ha! No wonder the guests looked twice as she passed. Her petticoats and the skirt of her gown had to be doing their butterfly thing, owing to her forward-crouch driving posture, while her leg-of-mutton sleeves flapped in the wind on either side. At the turn for the Auric Estate, she jammed the brake pedal with her right foot and spun the elliptical steering wheel, skidding perfectly onto the shale driveway. Some fool honked his horn behind her, so she opened the pressure release valve, letting off a blast of steam from the tail exhausts.

  That’ll teach ‘em.

  The enormous manor house stood deceptively higher than the surrounding grounds, on top of a natural mound. Besides the beauty of its architecture, which was striking, almost palatial, like something from Versailles, the house was situated in a hug of maples, beeches and hornbeams. An ostentatious baroque fountain decorated with cherubs and griffons and other hideous things dominated the front of the grounds. To its left, an enormous tent had been erected for the protection of vehicles from the heavy rainfall forecast that night. A considerate touch. Meredith followed the directions given by the uniformed attendants, but quickly held up proceedings due to her exceedingly poor reversing skills. In her defence, she had bought the thing for racing, not for playing vehicular chess.

  “Merry!”

  Such a welcome voice. But who was this waving at her? Where Meredith’s new apparel had drawn attention in London for being avant-garde, even risqué, the sight of poor dear Sonja dolled-up like a mannequin princess and squeezed into an exquisite, traditional-to-the-last-stitch ball gown was far more shocking. Every trace of the awkward tomboy was gone. Either her fairy godmother had called in a few magic debts to pull this off or else Sonja, in the few weeks they’d been apart, really had become a society woman.

  The idea stiffened Meredith, while Sonja’s walk was uncharacteristically graceful at the top of the steps. Her kid sister greeted guests as though she’d glad-handed all her life.

  “Merry, it’s so good to see you.” Sonja gave her a hug, then whispered, “Thank God you came to rescue me. These people are positively horrid.”

  “I know. I’ve had a belly-full in London.”

  “Should we speed away before they smother us? Your car looks perfect for the task. It’s—Oh, hello, Mrs. Abernathy, nice of you to come—Thank you for saying so—Yes, Derek mentioned your husband just this morning—and it’s lovely to meet you in person too.” She beat a hasty retreat from the latest throng approaching from the vehicle tent, pulling Meredith with her inside the house. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. All this politeness—they want me in a diabetic coma, I just know it. Oh no! Quick, on your guard. Here they are.”

  The ornamental middle-aged couple sorting guests in the foyer needed no introduction. King and Queen Auric were seasoned pros, polite to a fault. He was more suave and congenial than Meredith had expected, while Mrs. Auric was a sunny hostess of the summeriest order.

  “Sebastian, Wilhelmina, I’d like to introduce my older sister, Meredith. She’s currently residing with Lady Catarina Fairchild in London.”

  Extra points for the reference.

  “Pleased to meet you, my dear,” said Mrs. Auric.

  “Likewise, ma’am. And sir, how do you do?”

  A curt, dutiful bow from the man who hated her surname. “Very well, thank you. Your journey from London was a pleasant one?”

  “A thrilling one. I sped—I mean spent the whole journey looking at the scenery.” One of the dumber things to have escaped her mouth, but it was better than the truth, for them at least. Sonja rolled her eyes, nudged Meredith for an elaboration. Nothing sprang to mind.

  “Find us in the ballroom shortly, Meredith—” Mrs. Auric peered at the line of guest queued at the doorway, “—and we’ll talk some more. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Me too.”

  Sonja hustled her away across the crowded foyer, where partygoers seemed to be migrating to a room through double doors, behind the great staircase. “Well, that’s over, at least. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you to the mercy of these vampires for long. Soon as I’ve finished my turnstile duty I’ll come back for you—but in the meantime, I think you’d better start the evening with someone you know. Now where is the little—ah, there you go, two points to starboard, just past the four hags over there. Do you see him?”

  “No. Who?” The height and length of the ballroom exceeded what she’d imagined, as did its opulence. A series of extraordinary floor-to-ceiling murals depicted various famous British achievements, mostly military involving sailing ships, airships and diving bells, but several featured the Leviacrum towers at sunset, in twilight, at different stages of its construction. In other words, the place was an Imperial shrine.

  “Parnell. He was first to arrive, poor lad. At least he brought Ethel with him—I’m glad about that. This would’ve been torture for him otherwise.”

  “Parnell! Good old Parnell.” She still hadn’t spotted him, perhaps because he was dressed to the nines and little resembled the bookworm she knew. “Who else did you get to invite?”

  “That’s about it, I’m afraid. I thought about sending to a few of the girls from school but then I remembered they all hate me. Let’s see, there was Ginny McGann from tennis; she had a prior engagement. The Astles from the newsagents wanted to come but when I mentioned Auric Manor they crawled into their shells—much too hoity-toity for them, they said. But I did get a card and a nice present. Um, that’s all. Everyone I know is either unreachable or uninvitable—the Van Persies would have been on the list if it was my house—and, well, yes, it’s you and Parnell flying the flag for me. Oh, and some chap telephoned this morning from London, said he’s a friend of yours and asked if it was all right if he came. I said yes. But for the life of me I can’t remember his name. Too many distractions.”

  “Not Donnelly? He told me he couldn’t make it.”

  “No, not him. Blast, if only I’d written it down. Ah well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we. Meantime, take it easy on Parnell, will you? I shan’t be long.”

  “You might want to up your mainsail there before you go,” advised Meredith, motioning to Sonja’s off the shoulder gown which had slipped rather too low for propriety on one side.

  “Yikes!” Blushing, she quickly hoisted it and set sail for harbour duty at the front door.

  Meredith ventured out to find Parnell. She wondered who the scallywag caller from London might be? Whoever it was, why hadn’t he asked her permission to attend? All very mysterious.

  “Hello, Meredith.” Ethel Steenwyck flagged Meredith over with a peach napkin. She made up with spirit and good humour for what her drab gown lacked in sparkle. “Come and join us.”

&nbs
p; “How do you do, Ethel? Well, well, look who’s all spruced up.” Meredith couldn’t resist straightening Parnell’s bowtie. She and Ethel both tittered when he grunted and spun away to hide the fact that he’d become red as a beetroot. “Sorry, I’ll be good from now on, I promise,” Meredith said.

  Ethel had always been a good sport. She worked in her family’s shoe shop over on Victoria Road, and though she was a few years older than Meredith, they’d spent a fair bit of time together at the Southsea Fair over successive summers several years ago, becoming easy, if not exactly close, friends. “It’s all a bit...overwhelming,” she said, surveying the ballroom. “How the other half lives.”

  “Agreed,” replied Meredith.

  “But you’ve been to these sorts of functions a lot, haven’t you?”

  Meredith ladled a generous serving of punch into a glass for herself. Drank it in one swig. “Quite a few, yes, but I’ve never cared for them. It’s too much pontificating. People hardly ever say what they mean unless it’s to impress. And the small talk?” She motioned to stick a finger down her throat. “I’m glad you two are here, though. You’ve probably saved my bacon.”

  “Likewise.” Parnell poured a glass each for the three of them. “Say, did you ever get to the bottom of that pocket watch business?”

  He can’t be that stupid.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The Atlas case, you know, with the number engraved on the back, and the Latin inscription and...we couldn’t...get it open...if...you—” He stopped, mid blush, when she scowled inches from his face. “Teeth.”

  “That’s right. And you know what they’re going to bite off if you say any more on that subject, don’t you, Parnell?”

  “Sorry. I was just...sorry.”

  “What’s all that?” Ethel eased herself between them, backed Parnell away. “What are you two up to?”

  “Nothing.” He tried to hide his embarrassment with a charming laugh, with the emphasis on trying. The only charm Parnell possessed hung behind the counter at his bookstore, and was East African.

  Before she’d finished playfully strangling the truth out of him, Ethel turned her attention across the ballroom. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with these men.” She hurriedly primmed her hair, then stood meek as a lamb at Parnell’s side. “They’re heading this way like angry scrum-halves.”

  “To us?” Instinct told Meredith to keep her back to them until she knew more, and in case she had to run for it—the element of surprise might give her an extra second’s start.

  “Yes.”

  “Describe them. Quickly.”

  “Youngish men, no more than their early twenties. Extremely well-dressed. Five, no, six of them. One or two really good-looking.”

  Six? No more than their early twenties? It couldn’t be—

  “Do we need to call for help or something?” Ethel asked.

  Meredith wasn’t sure how to answer that, even when she clocked who they were by deduction: the mysterious telephone caller from London, saying he was a friend of Meredith’s; their number, six; their age, appearance, attractiveness, their brashness.

  “Will it be scissors, paper, or stone?” one of them called out. She spun round.

  Unbelievably, insensibly, the Gambling Six from Pocock’s Party had followed her from London and were here to make her evening. Or were they? Thurston Kingsley, who led them across the ballroom, grinning like a maniac, had been there that night in the Atlas tunnel when she’d violated its sanctity with such murderous results.

  But did he know? Could he know? No witnesses had been left alive...that she knew of. They had her blood from the trail she’d left, but so what? She—Meredith McEwan—was one of a million anonymous citizens they had no reason to suspect. It didn’t stop a thousand imagined mistakes from pouring through the cracks in her resolve all at once.

  “Gentlemen. Where did you come from? Frank?” Her pet name for Kingsley she’d completely forgotten until now.

  “From limbo, of course—where you’ve left us all this time, Miss McEwan.” Alan Nickson, the Eurasian member of the group, had lost none of his spirit. Nor had his other mates, Fraser, Donzelot, Saunders and Mears, lost a whit of adoration for Meredith. They jostled into a tight semicircle around her, so tight that poor Ethel and Parnell snuck off to find a quieter niche.

  The boys watched her every move with wide-eyed fascination. They shushed one another to catch her every word. If they had tails they’d be wagging. A pungent smell of lager had followed them in, and now enwrapped her.

  “So you tried to find out where I lived, but couldn’t?”

  Saunders, the bear-like one whose black eye had fully healed, beat the others to the punch. “Well, Thurs had to stay on in London for a spell, so you could say it was him that tried. Tried and bloody well failed.” Hearty laughter ensued, and much rearranging of Kingsley’s attire.

  “There was nothing I could do,” he claimed, to a chorus of jeers. “I had no address, and no one knew how to get in touch with Lady Catarina.”

  “No, she’s...indisposed at present. So how did you find me?” She finished her second glass, poured herself another.

  “It was in all the papers,” Kingsley replied. “Your sister’s engagement, I mean. Old man Auric knows all those moguls personally, so you could say he knew how to splash the news around London. Never backward at coming forward, these media types. Anyhow, it was Nickson who spotted it first in the paper. He wired me last night, all put-out, thought it was you getting married.” The obligatory turning up of Nickson’s collar failed to amuse him this time.

  “I told him Sonja was your sister,” Kingsley added, “and we both decided it was our best chance to find you. So I telephoned ahead this morning and asked your sister’s permission to attend. Luckily she said yes. But if I’m being honest, we’d probably have crashed anyway. And the second these other reprobates found out where we were going, they became human limpets, wouldn’t let us alone—look, you can see the resemblance.”

  “You gentlemen came all this way just to see me?”

  “Well, I don’t see any gentlemen who made the trip, but the six of us wouldn’t have missed it,” said Nickson, at which they all bowed to Meredith.

  “I’m...I’m flattered, truly.” And so relieved it had nothing to do with her Atlas infiltration that she dropped her glass of punch on its way to her lips. Saunders caught it but spilled the contents onto his trousers—fortunately not much.

  “Good catch,” a few of them said in unison.

  “I’ll hazard a guess you’re the wicket keeper, Saunders,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Nothing gets by me.”

  “Except the world and its cousin.” Mears held up the big man’s wallet that had fallen from his pocket when he’d crouched to catch the glass.

  “Gimme that.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say, gentlemen. You may have just transformed the most stressful function of the calendar year into one I’ll cherish forever.” Overdone and coquettish, perhaps, but on some level even that sentiment undersold the gratitude she felt toward them. She’d secretly dreaded everything about today: meeting the Aurics, watching Sonja take one more step to a new life away from Meredith, meeting the Aurics, seeing the palace they lived in, having to pretend she was happy about the whole thing, meeting the Aurics. And now this—learning that Kingsley, and therefore (likely) the Atlas institution itself really knew nothing about her role in the murders the other week. She could kiss all six of them and do a whole lot more.

  Kisses would have to suffice, one for each of them, and nothing less than on the lips. It happened before she had chance to consider who might be watching. From first to last, she lavished each with several prolonged moments of thrilling passion, holding nothing back. None said a word. Each participated wholeheartedly, taking his turn as though he was auditioning for the romantic role of a lifetime. When it was over, she looked back across thei
r stunned faces and quirked an eyebrow in satisfaction. “Who’ll have a drink with me?”

  So taken aback were the university men that they simply gawped at her as she refilled her glass. One shared look between them did the trick, sparking a free-for-all at the punch bowl, the ladle becoming as prized an item as the bow of Odysseus. To Meredith’s amusement, at least three of them dipped their glasses straight into the punch.

  With all six men arrayed in front of her, glasses at the ready, she gave a toast, “To my little sister, Sonja—may she find an appropriate nautical phrase to describe this happy occasion, and may she be unconscionably happy from here on.”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  “But what does unconscionably mean?” asked Donzelot, the half-French member of the group, at which Meredith laughed along with the others. “What is so funny?”

  “You are, Garlic-Breath,” replied Saunders.

  “It means greatly exceeding the bounds of reason, and not necessarily in a good way,” Nickson explained.

  “Ah, in that case...” Donzelot held up his glass and, seeing Meredith down her drink in one go, promptly followed suit. His fellows did the same.

  Over the next hour or so, Meredith played merry host to the Gambling Six in their own private retreat in the corner. She listened to all their university anecdotes, their tales of adolescent adventures in foreign lands, most of them either embellished beyond all recognition or plain hogwash. The more absurd, the more she chuckled, like she hadn’t with anyone except Sonja. They may have been yarn-spinning for her sake, or it could be the drink responsible, but she couldn’t get enough of it.

  Meanwhile, Sonja and Derek were given the first official dance. The orchestra played waltz after waltz, all seemingly by Strauss.

  When the boys ran out of jokes, and Meredith refused their pleas for a dance, Donzelot, Mears, Nickson and Fraser went off in search of willing partners. They all succeeded, while Meredith watched on, blissfully tipsy, linking arms with Kingsley and Saunders.